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C 0_L U M B U S 

THE NAVIGATOR 

th ^torg of %x& fetfe Attb 'Worft 

TOGETHER WITH 

An Account of the Pre-Columbian Discovery 
OF America 



BY 



HENRY FREDERIC REDDALL 

AUTHOR OF "FROM THE GOLDEN GATE TO THE GOLDEN HORN," " THE SUNNY SIDE OF 
POLITICS," »* FACT, FANCY, AND FABLE," ETC. 






NEW YORK 

EMPIRE publishing COMPANY 

146 AND 148 Worth Street 



\-^ VA \ 






Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 



[A// rights reserved.^ 






/ 



/,i 



COLUMBUS. 



(AT HAVANA.) 

There, 'mid these paradises of the seas, 

The roof beneath of this cathedral old, 
That lifts its suppliant arms above the trees, 

Each clasping in its hand a cross of gold, 

Columbus sleeps— his crxmibling tomb below 1 
By faith his soul rose eagle-winged and free, 

And reached that power whose wisdom never fails. 
Walked 'mid the kindled stars, and reverently 

The Ught earth weighed in God's own golden scales 
A man of passions like to men's was he. 

He overcame them, and with hope and trust 
Made strong his soul for higher destiny, 
And, following Christ, he walked upon the sea; 

The waves upheld him,— what is here is dust." 

— Hezekiah Butterworth, 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

The Nobseman 11 

CHAPTER II. 
A New Euiiope . . » , 40 

CHAPTER III. 
Cheistopher Columbus 90 

CHAPTER IV. 
AcKOss THE Western Ocean 157 

CHAPTER V. 
Results and Rewards 0L21 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

^ Portrait of Christopher Columbus Frontispiece. 

•J Norsemen on the Coast of America 14 

V Leif Ericson 24 

V Map of Vinland 30 

^ The Old Stone Mill, Newport 34 

>/ The Yanez Portrait op Columbus. . 102 

V Columbus's first Interview with Father Perez. = . . 134 

V Columbus recalled by order of Isabella 142 

'^Columbus received by Isabella 148 

^ Father Juan and Garcia watching the Departure 

OF Columbus 156 

■^ The Ships of Columbus 178 

^ Columbus presenting an " Indian" to Ferdinand 

AND Isabella 210 

V Columbian Monument designed by Jose de Man- 

JARRES 218 

V BOBADILLA LOCKING COLUMBUS IN A DUNGEON 264 

-J Columbus sent to Spain in chains 268 

V Death of Columbus 276 

V Sunal's Statue of Columrus, Central Park, New 

York 280 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



Probably none of the world's men of mark has 
been more frequently written about than Chris- 
topher Columbus, and it may be that there is 
nothing very new to be said concerning his 
career. 

But it seemed to the author that at this junc- 
ture, with the four hundredth anniversary of the 
Columbian re-discovery of America at hand, there 
was room for a sketch which should present in 
brief form the life-story of the great explorer, 
and at the same time acquaint the reader with the 
facts concerning the pre-Columbian discoveries 
and voyages in the Western World by the Norse- 
men from Iceland and Greenland in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries of our era. 

There are upward of a hundred notable books 
dealing with the discovery of America, dating 
from 1076 to 1892. Washington Irving's '' Life " 



10 PBEFATOBY NOTE. 

can never be surpassed as a romance ; he had access 
to materials and documents never before collated. 
Next in value stand Prescott's " Eeign of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella/' and Sir Arthur Helps' brief 
biography of the great admiral, and his " History 
of the Spanish Conquest in America." Professor 
Tarducci pubhshed in 1891 an exceedingly able 
and painstaking life of the great pioneer, as did 
Mr. Justin Winsor, in 1892. These works prac- 
tically exhaust the subject, though they are not 
much read by the masses, and they have been 
freely consulted in the preparation of the present 
book. To them and to Laing's " Heimskringla," 
Da Costa's " Pre-Columbian Discovery of America," 
Brinton's "Myths of the New World," Professor 
Rasmus B. Anderson's " America not Discovered 
by Columbus," Marie A. Brown's (Mrs. Shipley) 
"Icelandic Discoveries of America," Mr. J. B. 
Shipley's " English Re-Discovery and Colonization 
of America," Mrs. J. B. Shipley's " Leif Ericson 
and not Columbus the Discoverer of America," 
and her " Suppressed Historical Facts Concerning 
the Discovery of America," the reader is referred 
who desires to pursue this fascinating theme at 
greater length. 

H. F. R. 

Kew Yoek, 1892. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE NORSEMEN. 

" Lightly tlie long-snake 
Leaps after tempests, 
Gaily the sun-gleam 
Glows after rain. 
In labor and daring 
Lies luck for all mortals." 

I^oi'se Saga. 

Who first " disco vered " America will probably 
never be known, but " discovered " it was many 
thousands of years prior to the fleeting visits of 
the Scandina^dan vikings to the coasts of New 
Enp'land and Newfoundland. Far back in the 
childhood or the early manhood of the human 
race the great Western Continent was peopled, at 
least in part, either by migrations from the east 



12 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR, 

across the Atlantic or from the west across the 
Pacific. These primitive peoples were the first 
immigrants to America. But the links of com- 
munication with the continents on either hand — 
if such ever existed — were broken, and " this New 
World which is the Old " was unknown to Europe 
until the eighth or tenth century of our era. Even 
then the veil of obscurity was only lifted for a 
brief ghmpse of the beyond, and then dropped 
while Europe slumbered in the apathy of the 
Dark Ages for another five hundred years. 

It is a curious but none the less well-attested 
fact that among the mythical traditions of the pre- 
Columbian inhabitants of America — Mexicans, 
Peruvians, Aztecs, and Indians — was the belief 
that their national heroes, depicted as fair of 
skin and mighty in battle, should at some not 
distant day return and restore the race to its 
pristine power and influence. Always these 
mighty ones were to come from the east, whence 
they were named the "Dawn Heroes." And 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. l3 

here, says Brinton, in his " Myths of the New 
World/' " was one of those unconscious prophecies 
pointing to the advent of a white race from the 
east that wrote the doom of the red man in letters 
of fire. Historians have marveled at the instan- 
taneous collapse of the empires of Mexico and 
Peru, the Mayas, and the Natchez, before a hand- 
ful of Spanish filibusters. The fact was that 
wherever the whites appeared they were con- 
nected with these ancient predictions of the Spirit 
of the Dawn returning to claim his own. Ob- 
scure and ominous prophecies, ' texts of bodeful 
song,' rose in the memory of the natives and 
paralyzed their arms." 

" For a very long time," said Montezuma, at his 
first interview with Cortes, " has it been handed 
down that we are not the original possessor3 of 
this land, but came hither from a distant region 
under the guidance of a ruler who afterward left 
us and never returned. We have ever believed 
that some day his descendants would come and 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 15 

resume dominion over us. Inasmuch as you are 
from that direction, which is toward the rising of 
the sun, and serve so great a king as you describe, 
we beHeve that he is also our natural lord, and 
are ready to submit ourselves to him.'' The 
subjects of Montezuma believed that the day which 
saw the coming of fair and bearded strangers from 
the east would bring them freedom from slavery, 
and hence when they first set eyes on the white- 
skinned Spaniards " they rushed into the water to 
embrace the prows of their vessels, and dispatched 
messengers throughout the land, to proclaim the 
joyful tidings." 

Brinton says that the natives of Haiti told 
Columbus of kindred prophecies which were in 
circulation long before his landing ; the Maryland 
Indians said " the whites were an old generation 
revived, who had come back to kill their nation 
and usurp their places." 

Probably there is nothing more in these tradi- 
tions and their apparent fulfilment than a mere 



16 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

coincidence. Certain it is, however, that if a 
distinctively white race were wanted to personate 
the " Dawn Heroes/' a people from a colder and 
more northerly clime than Spain would have 
suited all the conditions far better than the 
swarthy Spaniards. And it is to such a white race 
that the honor of the first discovery of America 
by Europeans must be awarded — the flaxen-haired 
and fair-skinned Norsemen. 

" At a moment," says a recent writer, " when 
the hardy and independent inhabitants of Iceland 
are once more deserting in large numbers their 
island homes for the purpose of seeking in Can- 
ada and in our north-western States a soil more 
generous and more grateful than that which so 
sparingly covers the barren and arid rock which 
figures as the outpost of Europe in the North 
Atlantic Ocean, it is worthy of being remembered 
that a similar migration of Icelanders to America 
took place nine hundred years ago. On that occa- 
sion they had no railroad trains and emigrant cars 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 • 

to convey them into the interior, and therefore were 
content to settle down in Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, Nova Scotia, and Labrador, where numer- 
ous traces of their former presence remain to this 
day. They gave the name of ' Yinland ' to their 
newly-discovered colony, established parishes and 
monasteries and churches that were placed under 
the supervision of the Bishops of Greenland, and 
dispatched Dame Gudrid, the wife of one of their 
principal leaders, on a mission or pilgrimage to 
Rome. While there she was received with much 
graciousness by Pope Urban, and was able to give 
both to him and to his court a full account of the 
Icelandic colony in America. The information 
which she furnished, together with the reports 
addressed to Rome by the Bishops of Greenland 
concerning their diocesan voyages to Vinland, 
renders it a matter of certainty that the Papacy 
at any rate was perfectly aware of the existence 
of America for at least a couple of hundred years 
prior to its alleged discovery by Columbus." 



18 COLUMBUS THE NAVtGATOn. 

But, as Rudyard Kipling would say, " this is an- 
other story," and of these events we shall treat at 
greater length in a subsequent chapter. 

It is only within the last few decades that the 
historic fact of the Norse discoveries and coloni- 
zations of Greenland and North-eastern America 
has been established beyond cavil. " Since 1838, 
when, through the efforts of Rafn and the Royal 
Society of Copenhagen, the Scandinavian sagas 
have been submitted to the critical judgment of 
Europe, all ground of doubt has been removed. 
It is now conceded that Greenland, Labrador, 
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and perhaps the 
north-eastern parts of the United States, were 
visited and to a limited extent colonized before 
the Norman conquest of England." 

The history of the Norwegians, or Norsemen, 
only becomes authentic with their conversion to 
Christianity, at the close of the tenth century ; all 
records previous to this date consist in great part 
of a farrago of bombastic mythology and legend- 



COL UMB U8 THE NA VIGA TOE. 1 9 

ary history. But enough is known of these hardy 
sea-kings to make it certain that they were the 
most intrepid voyagers of their day. " In the 
ninth and tenth centuries the beaks of their long 
ships were seen in every known port of Europe as 
far south and east as the Golden Horn ; their 
armed aid could be secured by any ruler who 
could afford to pay for it." They were the 
wolves of the high-seas. 

" The discovery of Greenland by the Icelanders 
about the year 981/' says Laing, " and the 
establishment of considerable colonies on one or 
on both sides of that vast peninsula which ter- 
minates at Cape Farewell, are facts which no 
longer admit of any reasonable doubt." The 
chief documentary evidence in the case is the now 
famous " Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the Kings 
of Norway," otherwise known as the Sagas of 
Snorro Sturleson, a work which has been trans- 
lated into various languages and commented on 
by many able writers. 



20 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

Snorro Sturleson, or Snorri Sturlason, the Ice- 
landic poet and historian, was born in 1178, at 
Hvami, in Iceland. He was the son of Sturla 
Thordsson, the founder of the powerful family 
named Sturlung. By his marriage, in 1199, with 
Herdys, and after her death, with Hallveg Orms- 
datter, he gained great possessions, and he was in 
the habit of attending the Althing with a follow- 
ing of nearly a thousand retainers. In the year 
1218 he traveled to NorAiray, where he spent two 
years. Keturning to Iceland, he was, in 1237, 
obliged to exile himself to Norway on account of 
the hostiHty of his brother and nephew. Pos- 
sessed of wonderful poetical powers, he helped 
his patron and protector, Skuli, in a war against 
King Hakon. In consequence, on his return to 
Iceland, he was, by order of Hakon, murdered 
by Kuykholt, on the 22d of September, 1241. 
Snorro Sturleson was the last and one of the 
greatest of the Northern scalds or bards. He 
was the author of a great number of scaldic 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR, 21 

epics, and is usually regarded as the compiler of 
the " Younger Edda." His writings were regarded 
as being in the main faithful descriptions of 
actual occurrences, though interlarded with much 
that was mere romance. 

According to geographers and historians, 
Greenland was discovered in the ninth century 
by an Icelander or Norwegian named Gumbiorn, 
son of Ulf Kraka. He was " driven by a storm 
to the west of Iceland, and discovered a great 
country, of which he brought the news to Ice- 
land. Soon after, one Eric the Red was con- 
demned at Thornaes Thing, in Iceland, to banish- 
ment for a murder he had committed. He fitted 
out a vessel, and told his friends he would go 
and find the land which Gumbiorn had seen, and 
come back and let them know what kind of a 
country it was. Eric sailed Avest from Iceland 
to the east coast of Greenland, and then followed 
the shore southward, looking for a convenient 
place in which to dwell. He passed the first 



22 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

winter on an isle which from him was called 
Eric's Isle. After passing three years in examin- 
ing the coast, he returned to Iceland, and gave 
such a fine account of the country that it was 
called Greenland ; the following year, twenty-five 
vessels, with colonists, were sent out with him to 
dwell there, but only about one half reached their 
destination, some having turned back and some 
being lost in the ice. Many came over from Ice- 
land from time to time, and the country was set- 
tled wherever it was habitable." In this account 
there is nothing incredible or inconsistent. 
Greenland was to Iceland what Iceland had been 
to Norway — a place of refuge for the surplus 
population, and for those who had no land or 
means of living. The extinction of such a 
colony, after existing for four hundred years, is 
certainly more extraordinary than its estabHsh- 
ment, and almost justifies the doubt whether it 
ever existed. Several causes are given for this 
extraordinary circumstance. One is the accumu- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 23 

lation of ice on both sides of this vast peninsula ; 
another cause was probably the great pestilence, 
called the Black Death, which appeared in 
Europe about 1349, and which seems to have 
raged with singular virulence in the north. It 
is supposed by some that this pestilence either 
swept off the whole population of the colony, 
or weakened it so much that the survivors were 
at last cut off by the Esquimaux, with whom 
the colonists appeared to have been always at 
enmity." 

It is now the generally received opinion among 
historians and critics that the discovery of 
America, or Vinland, by Norse voyagers from 
Greenland or Iceland rests upon as satisfactory 
evidence as the colonization of Greenland by the 
same hands. The verdict of the modern world 
was in fact proclaimed when, in the city of 
Boston, in the year 1887, there was erected a 
statue to " Leif the Discoverer." 

The story of these Norse voyages, as told in 




Leif Ericson. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 25 

the Sagas of Snorro Sturleson is quite diffusej 
being as usual mingled with and marred by 
many heroic and half-mythical details. The fol- 
lowing abridgment is from Samuel Laing's trans- 
lation of the " Heimskringla." 

" Eric the Red, in the spring of 986, emigrated 
from Iceland to Greenland with Herjulf Bardson. 
He fixed his abode at Brattalid, in Ericsfiord ; 
Herjulf settled at Herjulfsness. Biorne, the son 
of the latter, was absent in Norway at the time, 
and finding on his return that his father was 
gone, resolved to follow him, and put to sea. As 
winter was approaching, they had bad weather, 
northerly winds and fogs, and did not know 
where they were. When it cleared up they saw 
a land without mountains, but with many small 
hills, and covered with wood. This not answer- 
ing the description of Greenland, they turned 
about, and after sailing two days they came to 
another land, flat and covered with wood. Then 
they stood out to sea with a southwest wind, 



26 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

and sailing with fresh gales reached, in four 
days more, Herjulfsness in Greenland, his 
father's abode. Some years after this, supposed 
to be about 994, Biorne was in Norway on a 
visit to Earl Erie, and was much blamed, when 
he told of his discovery, for not having examined 
the country he had seen more accurately. Leif, 
a son of Eric the Red, bought his ship, when 
Biorne returned to Greenland, and with a crew 
of thirty-five men set out to look for these 
lands. He came first to the land which Biorne 
had seen last, landed, found no grass, but vast 
icy mountains in the interior, and between them 
and the shore a plain of flat slaty stones, and 
hence called the country Hellaland. They put 
to sea, and came to another country, which was 
level, covered with woods, with many cliffs of 
white sand, and a low coast, which they named 
Markland {' outfield or woodland '). They 
again stood out to sea with a northeast wind, 
and after two days' sailing made land, and came 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 27 

to an island eastward of the mainland, and 
entered into a channel between the island and a 
point projecting northeast from the mainland. 
They sailed eastward, saw much ground laid dry 
at ebb tide, and at last went on shore at a place 
where a river which came from a lake fell into 
the sea. They brought their vessel through the 
river, into the lake, and anchored. Here they 
put up some log huts ; but, after resolving to 
winter there, they constructed larger booths or 
houses. After lodging themselves, Leif divided 
his people into two companies, to be employed 
by turns in exploring the country and working. 

One of the exploring party, a 

German by birth, called Tyrker, was one day 
missing. They went out to look for him, and 
soon met him, talking German, rolling his eyes, 
and beside himself. He at last told them in 
Norse, as they did not understand German, that 
he had been up the country, and had discovered 
vines and grapes ; adding, ' that he should know 



28 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

what vines and grapes were, as he was born in a 
country in which they were in plenty.' They 
occupied themselves in hewing timber for load- 
ing the vessel, and in collecting grapes, with 
which they filled the ship's boat. Leif called 
the country Yinland. They sailed away in the 

spring, and returned to Greenland 

Leif s brother, Thorwald, set out, in the year 
1002, to Vinland in Leif s vessel, and came 
to his booths or houses, and wintered there. 
In the spring Thorwald sent a party in the 
boat to explore the coast to the south. They 
found the country beautiful, well wooded, with 
but little space between the woods and the 
sea, and long stretches of white sand, and 
also many islands and shoals ; and on one 
island found a corn barn, but no other traces 
of people. They returned in the autumn to 
Leif s booths. Next summer Thorwald sailed 
with the large vessel, first eastward, then north- 
ward, past a headland opposite to another head- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 2i) 

land, and forming a bay. They called the first 
headland Kialarness (^ Keel Ness '). They then 
sailed into the nearest fiord, to a headland 
covered with wood. Thorwald went on shore, 
and was so pleased that he said ' he should 
like to stay here.' . . . . Next sum- 
mer, viz., 1006, two ships from Iceland came 

to Greenland From thence they 

sailed in a southerly direction to Hellaland, 
where they found many foxes. From thence, 
saiHng two days to the south, they came to 
Markland, a wooded country stocked with 
animals. Then they sailed southwest for a 
long time until they came to Kialarness, where 
there were great deserts and long beaches and 
sands. When they had passed these, the land 
was found to be indented with inlets. They had 
two Scots with them, Hake and Hekla, whom 
Leif had formerly received from Eng Olaf 
Tryggvesson, and who were very swift of foot. 
They were put on shore to explore the country 




Chart of Norse Voyages, 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 31 

to the southwest, and in three days they re- 
turned with some grapes and some ears of wheat 
which grew wild in that country. They con- 
tinued their course until they came to a fiord 
which penetrated far into the land. Off the 
mouth of it was an island with strong currents 
around it, and also up in the fiord. They found 
vast numbers of eider ducks on the island, so 
that they could scarcely walk without treading 
on their eggs. They called the island Straumay 
( ' Stream Isle ' ), and the fiord Straumfiord. A 
party of eight men, commanded by Thorwald, left 
them here, and went north to seek Vinland. 
Karlsefne proceeded with Snorro, Biorne, and 
the rest, in all 151 men, southwards. Those 
who went northwards passed Kialarness ; but 
were driven by westerly gales off the land, and to 
the coast of Ireland, where, it was afterwards 
reported, they were made slaves. Karlsefne and 
his men arrived at the place where a river issuing 
from a lake falls into the sea. Opposite to the 



82 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

mouth of the river were large islands. On the 
low grounds they found fields of wheat growing 

wild, and on the rising ground vines 

Karlsefne went to Norway with a Vinland cargo 
in the summer of 1012/ and it was considered 
very valuable. He even sold a piece of wood 
used for a door-bar or a broomstick to a Bremen 
merchant for half a mark of gold, for it was of 
massur-wood of Yinland. He returned and pur- 
chased land in Iceland, and many people of dis- 
tinction are descended from him and his son 
Snorro, who was born in Yinland." 

Commenting on the foregoing concise narrative, 
Mr. Laing observes that " all the geographical 
knowledge that can be drawn from the accounts 
of the natural products of Vinland in these 
chapters, points clearly to the Labrador coast, or 
Newfoundland, or some places north of the Gulf 
of St. Lawrence. The description of the land is 
unsatisfactory as a means of discovering the 
localities in Yinland they visited without more 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 33 

precise data. A country of stony soil, with little 
vegetation among the slaty fragments that cover 
it, appHes to all the country from Hudson's Bay 
to Newfoundland. Markland, so called because 
low or level and covered with thick forests, as a 
description, may be appHed to any part of 
America as well as to Nova Scotia. An island 
with a sound between it and the main, or a low 
shore with remarkably white sand cliffs and 
shallow water, a fiord or inlet of the sea, a river 
running out of a lake, a bay between two 
headlands, one of them of a conspicuous figure, 
are good landmarks for identifying a country 
of which the position is known, but good for 
nothing as data for fixing that position itself ; 
because these are features common to all sea- 
coasts, and, on a small or great scale, to be found 
within every hundred miles, of a run along the 
seaboard of a country. . . . All the details seem 
merely the fiUing up of imagination, to make a 
story of a main fact, the discovery of Yinland by 




The " Stone Mill;' Newport. 



J 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 35 

certain personages, whose names, and the fact of 
theu^ discovering unknown lands southwest of 
Greenland, are alone to be depended upon." 

Not so very long ago archaeologists who 
favored the story of Leif Ericson were wont to 
" point with pride " to two objects of interest 
on the coast of New England — the stone tower 
at Newport and Dighton Rock. But nowadays 
the evidence which would prove the one an erec- 
tion of the Vikings and the hieroglyphics on the 
other to be the mystic record of their acts is too 
slight to be of value. The stone tower is an 
e very-day mill with a modern pedigree ; Dighton 
Rock was scratched by Indians if by anybody. 

"It is not impossible," says John Clark Ridpath, 
" that, before the final relinquishment of Amer- 
ica by the Norse adventurers, a sea-wanderer 
from rugged Wales had touched our eastern 
shores. It is claimed that the Welsh Prince 
Madoc was not less fortunate than Leif Ericson 
in finding the western shore of the Atlantic. 



36 • GOL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

But the evidence of such an exploit is far less 
satisfactory than that by which the Icelandic dis- 
coveries have been authenticated. According to 
the legend which the Cambrian chroniclers with 
patriotic pride have preserved, and the poet 
Southey has transmitted, Madoc was the son of 
the Welsh king, Owen Gwynnedd, who flour- 
ished about the middle of the twelfth century. 
At this time a civil disturbance occurred in Wales, 
and Prince Madoc was obhged to save himself by 
flight. With a small fleet, he left the country 
in the year 1170, and, after sailing westward for 
several weeks, came to an unknown country, 
beautiful and wild, inhabited by a strange race 
of men, unhke the people of Europe. For some 
time the prince and his sailors tarried in the new 
land, dehghted with its exuberance and with the 
salubrious climate. Then, all but twenty of the 
daring company set sail and returned to Wales. 
It was the intention of Madoc to make prepara- 
tions and return again. Ten ships were accord- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 37 

ingly fitted out^ and the leader and his adven- 
turous crew a second time set their prows to the 
west. The vessels dropped out of sight one by 
one, but were never heard of more. The thing 
may have happened." 

If any corroborative opinion be needed as to 
the verity of the Norse voyages to America, we 
have that of Humboldt, in his " Cosmos," wherein 
he says : " We are here on historical ground. 
The discovery of the northern part of America 
by the Norsemen cannot be disputed. The 
length of the voyage, the direction in which they 
sailed, the time of the sun's rising and setting, 
are accurately given. While the Caliphate of 
Bagdad was still flourishing, America was dis- 
covered about the year 1000 A. D. by Leif, the 
son of Eric the Bed, at the latitude of forty-one 
and a half degrees north." 

What were the results of these successive voy- 
ages to the rest of the world ? Absolutely noth- 
ing. Europe was not yet awakened from her 



88 COL UMBUS THE NA VIGA TOB. 

mediaeval slumbers, nor had that wild spirit of 
adventure which dominated the centuries from 
the fifteenth to the eighteenth yet appeared 
among the English, the Spanish, and the Dutch. 
The news of the exploits of Leif Ericson was 
confined to a few ; it is not certain that the ex- 
isting rude records thereof were penned until 
many years after. 

As has been well said, the importance of any 
historical event is to be weighed by its conse- 
quences. The Norsemen sailed back and forth 
across the " roaring forties," but mankind was 
neither wiser, richer, nor better therefor. 

One by one the colonies dissolved ; there was 
no glory in fighting a few naked savages ; and 
Yinland was once more left untrodden by the 
white man. It is said that a desultory com- 
munication was kept up with America during 
the 13th and 14:th centuries, but of this there is 
no certainty. True it is, however, that the Norse- 
men had no conception that they had discovered 



COLUMBtTS THE NAVIGATOR. 39 

a new continent ; they imagined that Yinland was 
but a continuation of the coast of Greenland 
trending south and west. 

Leif and his sailors went to Valhalla ; the 
name of Yinland was forgotten ; the red man 
once more held undisturbed sway from the 
Hudson to the St. Lawrence ; and the Western 
World lay hidden for more than four hundred 
years from the ken of Europeans. 



40 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOM, 



CHAPTER II. 

A NEW EUROPE. 

*' Westward the course of Empire takes its way." 

In penning the famous line which heads this 
chapter^ Bishop Berkeley voiced the sentiment of 
the ages, from classic time to our own. West- 
ward the hopes and aspirations of the race have 
ever turned. Ancient mythology always placed 
its Fortunate Islands, the " Dixie " of those days, 
in the track of the setting sun, beyond where foot 
of man or keel of ship had never passed. The 
Hesperides of the Blest were located on an island 
to the west of Mt. Atlas in Africa, somewhere in 
that unknown sea outside the Pillars of Hercules.* 

* It would seem that the Canaries were known to the ancients, 
but that the knowledge became lost to the moderns, and they 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 41 

By degrees, the Ultima Thule of the ancient 
world was shifted by successive generations from 
point to point, but always westward, until it 
rested on wave-buffeted Iceland, where it re- 
mained for many hundreds of years. 

Despite its fear of the unknown, which is 
always terrible, the ancient world persisted with 
almost prophetic insight in imagining a vast 
extent of land somewhere to the westward of 
Spain — for so many centuries the occidental 
boundary of the ancient world. Nor is it even 
now measurably certain that these imaginings 
were entirely vain. The fabled Atlantis is a case 
in point, embodying as it does the pith of the 
legends of a pre-historic Atlantean continent. 

Nine thousand years before Plato lived and 
wrote, there existed, he tells us in his "Timseus," 
in the ocean that separates the Old World from 
the New, an island larger than Asia Minor and 

were re-discovered by an accident early in the 15tli century. From 
them Ptolemy commenced to comit the longitude. 



42 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

Northern Africa combined, densely peopled by a 
powerful race. He locates it in what is now a 
watery waste, midway between the westward 
projection of the desert coast of Africa and the 
corresponding indentation by the Gulf of Mexico 
of the " Paradise of America." On its western 
shores were other and smaller islands by way of 
which access might be had to a vast continent 
beyond. Its civihzation was as advanced as that 
of ancient Egypt. Its people were descended 
from Neptune and mortal women, and by force of 
arms their warriors penetrated into Africa as far 
eastward as Egypt, and into Europe as far as 
the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea (the western 
coast of Italy). Their conquests were checked 
by the Greeks after the Atlantean sea-kings had 
attempted to subjugate Europe, Africa, and Asia, 
and the deed was accounted one of the glories of 
Athens. At length, however, the people became 
so desperately wicked that the island with all its 
inhabitants was swept away by a deluge. In a 



* COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 43 

day and a night Atlantis disappeared beneath the 
waves. Another account, shghtly varied, says 
that after the defeat of the islanders, a terrific 
earthquake, attended by inundations of the sea, 
caused the island to sink, and for a long time 
thereafter the ocean was impassable by reason of 
the muddy shoals. Such is the substance of a 
legend, first communicated to Solon by an 
Egyptian priest, and perhaps founded on fact, 
1;hat has existed from a very early date. On old 
Venetian maps Atlantis was placed to the west- 
ward of the Canaries and the Azores. To the 
ancients, the unknown was always gigantic or 
fearful ; so they represented Atlantis as being 
larger than either Europe or Africa, though the 
great extent assigned to the island may have only 
signified one very large in proportion to the 
smaller isles of the Mediterranean — ^the only 
islands with which the ancients were familiar. 
Diodorus Siculus tells us that " over against 
Africa lies a very great island in the vast ocean^ 



44 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

many days' sail from Libya westward. The soil 
there is very fruitful, a great part whereof is 
mountainous, but much likewise champaign, 
which is the most sweet and pleasant part, for 
it is watered by several navigable streams, and 
beautiful with many gardens of pleasure, planted 
by divers sorts of trees and an abundance of 
orchards. The towns are adorned with stately 
buildings and banqueting-houses, pleasantly 
situated in their gardens and orchards." The 
inhabitants of Venezuela and of Guiana retained 
traditions of a convulsion " which swallowed up 
a vast country in the region now covered by the 
Atlantic Ocean." 

The Toltecs, the ancient inhabitants of Central 
America, have a tradition of the " cataclysm of 
the Antilles ; " among the Indians of North 
America there is a similar legend. The tribes 
located farther southward have a circumstantial 
narrative to the effect that the waves of the 
ocean were seen rolling in like mountains from 



COLUMBU 8 THE NAVIGATOR. 45 

the east, and that of the millions of people who 
fled toward the hills for refuge, only one man 
(seven in other accounts) was saved, from whom 
descended the present Indian races. A religious 
festival was instituted to commemorate the dread 
event, and to beseech the Almighty not to revisit 
the earth with such terrors. In this catastrophe 
it is claimed that an area greater in extent than 
France was enguKed, embracing the peninsulas 
of Yucatan, Honduras, Guatemala, and the lesser 
Antilles, together with the magnificent cities of 
Palenque and Uxmal, with most of their inhabi- 
tants ; and it is supposed that " the continent 
has since risen sufficiently to restore many of 
these ancient sites." The Greeks, the Egyptians, 
the Gauls, and the Romans, possessed traditions 
on this subject, and all the accounts substantially 
agree with each other. These traditions were 
collected by Timagenes, the Roman historian, 
who flourished in the century preceding the birth 
of Christ. He represents Gaul as having been 



46 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

invaded from a distant island to the westward, 
by whicli many understand Atlantis to be meant. 
Another writer, Mareellus, mentions that the 
inhabitants of seven islands lying in the Atlantic 
Ocean, near the coast of Europe (probably the 
Canaries), kept alive the memory of a much 
greater island, named Atlantis, which terrorized 
over the smaller ones. At the date of the exist- 
ance of Atlantis, according to Humboldt, what 
is now the Strait of Gibraltar was probably 
bridged by a solid isthmus at least as wide as 
that of Suez, thus closing the Mediterranean and 
making of it an inland sea. The same convul- 
sion of nature which engulfed the island also 
estabhshed communication between the At- 
lantic and the Mediterranean. Charles Fred- 
erick Martins, the French botanist, says that 
" hydrography, geology, and botany agree in 
teaching us that the Azores, the Canaries, and 
Madeira are the remains of a great continent 
which formerly united Europe to North America/' 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 47 

The ancient writers found this a most captivating 
subject upon which to expand their conjectures, 
as is proved by the many comments upon Plato's 
narratives which have descended to us moderns. 
Nor have there been wanting scientists in our 
own day to view with favorable eyes the possibility 
of the existence, at a time now remote, of a mid- 
Atlantic island. Humboldt, linger, and Goep- 
pert, the Abbe Brasseur, Winchell, Foster, Wild, 
Heer, and others equally eminent, found nothing 
startling or improbable in the idea. 

Eecent ocean exploration has given to the 
world som.3 interesting facts which substantiate 
the Atlantis theory in a remarkable degree. Sir 
Wyville Thompson, in the Challenger, in 1873, 
the expedition in the German frigate Gazelle, in 
1874, and Commander Gorringe, in the United 
States sloop Gettysburg, in 1877, all made sound- 
ings off the coast of Africa in mid-Atlantic. 
The last named discovered a great bed of living 
pink coral, one hundred and fifty miles westward 



48 GOL UMB US THE NA YIGA TOR. 

from Gibraltar, only thirty-two fathoms beneath 
the surface. When tabulated, these various 
soundings indicate the existence of a great bank 
in comparatively shoal water, the highest points 
of which are the Canaries and the Madeiras. 
There is little doubt, among the advocates of 
the Atlantean theory, that this bank is the east- 
ern end of the ancient island. It forms, so to 
speak, a mid-Atlantic mountain, the depth all 
around smking rapidly to fifteen thousand fath- 
oms. The early inhabitants of the Canaries, the 
Guanches, when they were " re-discovered," are 
said to have complained that ^^ God placed them 
there and then forsook and forgot them." 

Again, the sea-weed of the Sargasso Sea has no 
roots, and multipHes itself, not by fructification, 
but by division. At first sight this fact would 
seem to mihtate against the theory that a con- 
siderable body of land formerly existed in this 
vicinity. Humboldt was of opinion that the weed 
originated where it is found, but Robert Brown, 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 49 

a specialist in this department of science, and on 
such a question perhaps a weightier authority 
than the great German naturaHst, thought that 
the plant originated in large quantities on some 
neighboring coast, and was afterward perma- 
nently modified to suit the changed conditions it 
has occupied for ages. 

One of the first things which will impress a per- 
son who examines a map of the world, with the 
foregoing statements in mind, is the conformation 
of the continents of Africa and America at the 
points before alluded to. It requires only a very 
sHght effort to imagine that a great body of land 
might once have connected the Canaries and the 
Cape Yerde Islands with the mainland of Africa 
on the east and with the islands in the GuK of 
Mexico on the west. In fact, the outline of the 
land between Cape Blanco and the outlying islands 
of the West Indies almost suggests the theory 
propounded by some, that a huge sHce of terra 
firma was washed out by the sudden rush of a 



60 COLtfMBlfS THE NAVIGATOR. 

vast body of water from the north some time in 
the prehistoric ages. 

The Gulf of Mexico is very shallow as com- 
pared with the depth of the neighboring ocean, 
and its bottom is very nearly level; which two 
facts indicate a general sinking of the land here, 
also, perhaps by an inundation of waters from the 
valley of the Mississippi. The mountain summits 
of this long-forgotten land may still be viewed in 
the various groups of islands off the Atlantic 
coast of Europe, Africa, and America. The 
large continent lying beyond Atlantis, to which 
Plato refers, could have been none other than 
America. Indeed, the legend of Atlantis itself 
may be but a confused tradition of the existence 
of a great western continent. 

There are other most interesting facts bearing 
upon this subject. Remains of a civilization at 
once extensive and of great antiquity exist in 
Central America. These relics long ante-date the 
Aztec rule, and cannot be associated with the 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 51 

Phoenicians, whose voyages to America must be 
relegated to the region of fable. At most, these 
pioneers of antiquity sailed no further westward 
than Atlantis, and even that is doubtful. A 
French savant, M. Paul Gaffarel, has collected the 
information bearing upon this subject, and this is 
his conclusion : " Without affirming anything as 
yet, we may admit that the Phoenicians discovered 
a vast island beyond the Pillars of Hercules, many 
days' sail from the continent; that they made 
numerous voyages, and that they jealously pre- 
served exclusive possession with a view to remov- 
ing thence in case of necessity themselves, as the 
Dutch at one time contemplated removing to 
Batavia when the armies of Louis XIY. were 
menacing Amsterdam." 

The style of architecture of the Central Amer- 
ican remains reminds us of ancient Egyptian and 
Asiatic forms ; reHgious symbols exist which un- 
doubtedly carry us back to the phalHe rites of 
antiquity ; the lotus flower, the sacred emblem of 



52 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

India, may be seen upon its chiseled monuments ; 
and the pyramid is native to Mexico and Egypt 
alike. 

How were these resemblances in architecture 
and rehgion transplanted from the Orient to the 
Occident ? The origin of the civilization of the 
Aztecs and Peruvians has for many years been 
the subject of curious speculation. 

There is a theory, having the sanction of such 
names as those of Humboldt, Boudinot, Squier, 
and Daniel Wilson, that America was peopled 
from Asia met the Pacific ; that a continent for- 
merly existed between Asia and America in the 
region now known as Polynesia, the islands of 
the present day having formerly done service as 
mountain ranges and table-lands. There is said 
to be a close af&nity between the ancient pottery 
found in Peru on the west coast of South America, 
and Egyptian and Grecian ceramics; and Dr. 
Stephen Bowers states that in Southern California 
he has found stone implements almost identical 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 53 

with those found at Mycenae by Dr. Schliemann. 
What is the explanation of this strange similarity? 

If Humboldt's speculation be correct, and an 
island of continental proportions once filled a 
large part of the space now covered by the Pacific 
Ocean, an easy route would have been thereby 
provided for the sturdy explorers of the ancient 
world — who, of course, would bring their pottery 
with them — and thus our question would find a 
ready answer. 

But if, as Winchell believes, the ocean has 
always surged between Asia and America, and 
our continent was first peopled by Mongols 
chiefly by way of the Aleutian Islands and Beh- 
ring's Strait, our archaeological riddle is still 
unsolved, and we are forced to look elsewhere for 
a highway from the Old World to the New. The 
aboriginal inhabitants of the Canaries and of 
the Atlantic coast of Africa, the Guanches, now 
extinct, are regarded by Eetzius as being nearly 
related to the native peoples on the shores of the 



54 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

Caribbean Sea on the opposite coast. He says*. 
" The color of the skin on both sides of the 
Atlantic is represented in all these populations as 
being of a reddish brown ; the hair is the same ; 
the features of the face and build of the frame, as 
I am led to believe, presenting the same analogy." 
The same writer maintains that the races on 
the western shores of America closely resemble 
the Mongols of Asia, which opinion was shared 
by Humboldt. 

Admitting that Atlantis existed in the ocean 
which bears its name, it needs but a step further 
to imagine that the Azores, the Madeiras, the Cana- 
ries, and the Cape Yerde Islands were at one 
time either parts of it, or else were only separated 
from it and from each other by narrow channels. 
The same may be assumed of the Bermudas and 
the outlying West India Islands. 

Bearing in mind, also, that the Atlantic Ocean 
at the point indicated grows rapidly narrower, 
and that the slice of land engulfed would not be 



COLilMBUB THE NAVIGATOR. 55 

SO large as at other pointSj the supposition is not 
so startling" that at some period the two continents 
were, if not entirely connected, at least separated 
only by very narrow passages of water, which 
would offer no obstacle to the migration of peoples, 
and the dispersion of customs, and would account 
for much that has puzzled the ethnologist on this 
continent. Remains of extinct animals on the 
American mainland have led such investigators 
as Marsh, Cope, and Leidy to infer that an 
ancient connection existed between Europe and 
America. 

Although modern learning has, in some quar- 
ters, ridiculed the notion of the former existence 
of a large island where now the Atlantic surges 
roll, yet, as we have seen, science itself may be 
made to give plausible testimony to the truth of 
the legend. Underneath the chalk and green sand 
formation of England there is a strata called the 
wealden, which has been ascertained to extend 
about two hundred miles in either direction, and 



56 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGAfOU. 

which is some two thousand feet in thickness. 
For reasons which it is needless to recount here, 
this demonstrates that there was, for a very long 
period, a constant supply of fresh water, such as 
would result from the drainage of a large extent 
of mountainous or hilly land. " If geology can 
furnish us with such facts as these/' says Prof. 
Anthon, " it may surely be pardonable in us to 
linger with something of fond belief around the 
legend of Atlantis — a legend that could hardly be 
the offspring of a poetic imagination, but must 
have had some foundation in truth." 

'Twere hard to leave this fascinating subject 
without a glance at the flora which such a land as 
Atlantis must have possessed, supposing its exist- 
ence to have been a reahty. Looking at the 
Canaries, which we have supposed to be the 
remains of its eastern end, the observer is impressed 
with the richness of their almost tropical verdure. 
In these "Happy Isles" the generous grape is 
indigenous ; the more homely cereals abundantly 



Columbus THE NAVIGATOR. 57 

flourish ; and fruits of all kinds burden the air 
with their mellow fragrance. 

In the Bermudas, the opposite extremity of this 
supposititious continent, nature awaits us with 
still greater prodigality. Man's natural wants are 
bountifully supplied without the laborious ma- 
chinery so needful in our northern climate, which 
dooms the majority of our population to a cease- 
less drudgery for their daily bread. Fruits fit for 
the palate of Epicurus hang in clusters, and man 
has but to raise his hand to pluck them. 

What possibiHties were there not contained in 
a land which swept from the Canaries and the 
West Indies to the Bahamas and Newfoundland ? 
It must have been indeed a " land flowing with 
milk and honey ; " a region in which every variety 
of chmate was enjoyed, from the breezy vigor of 
its wind-swept mountain ranges to the dreamy, 
sensuous luxuriance of its tropical valleys. 

But did it really exist ? We cannot say ; but 
whether or no, only its phantom is left, and to us 



68 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

it is indeed a lost Atlantis, and an indication of 
the world's faith in the existence of a continental 
mass of land to the westward of Europe. 

We refer to the Atlantean myth — if such it be 
— at some length because of its intimate associa- 
tion with the dreams of many of the explorers of 
Columbus's day. It should be borne in mind, 
however, that the Genoese set out, not to discover 
a new world, but to reach an old-world country 
by a fresh route. He essayed to sail to the land 
of Kublai Khan and of Prester John by water and 
to the westward ; whereas a land route, to the 
east, had been hitherto the only means of approach 
to the Cathay of Marco Polo. 

In order the better to appreciate the full signi- 
ficance of such an event as the discovery of a new 
continent, it may profit us to glance at the condi- 
tion of Europe in the fifteenth century. And first 
let us see how large was the known world Anno 
Domini 1400. 

Take an ordinary flat projection of a map of 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 59 

the world ; blot out the whole of the Western 
continent ; blot out all the bleak lands to the 
north of the North Cape in Norway ; blot out all 
of Africa save a crescent-shaped strip of coast-line 
from Alexandria to Cape Nun^ together with the 
Cape Verde Islands 5 blot out the whole of Aus- 
tralia and the Pacific archipelago ; blot out Japan 
and the extreme north-eastern part of Asia. When 
we look at what is left we are surprised and 
amused at the conceit of the Romans, who 
claimed that their empire filled all the world. 
" When that empire fell into the hands of a single 
person/' says Gibbon, " the world became a safe 
and dreary prison for his enemies ; the slave of 
imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to 
drag the gilded chain in Rome, or to wear out 
a life of exile on the barren rocks of Seriphus or 
the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate 
in silent despair ; to resist was fatal, and it was 
impossible to fly ; on every side he was encom- 
passed with a vast extent of sea and land, which 



60 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

he could never hope to traverse without being 
discovered, seized, and I'estored to his irritated 
master." At the commencement of the Kenais- 
sance in Europe the territorial conditions were not 
greatly enlarged beyond those existing in the days 
of JuHus Caesar. 

But more than this, the terrors of men had 
clothed the unknown beyond with named and 
nameless horrors. Certain death in various 
repulsive and terrible forms awaited those who, 
afoot or afloat, pushed out into the unknown. 
The maxim of the map-makers of the time was, 
" Where you know nothing place terrors," and 
Jonathan Swift's well-known lines expressed " a 
condition, not a theory " ; 

" So geographers in Afric maps 
With savage pictures fill their gaps, 
And o'er unhabitable downs 
Place elephants for want of towns." 

Any old map will illustrate this. One before 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 61 

US as we write depicts the southern part of Africa 
being ravened by an impossible beast like to that 
portrayed in Stockton's quaint story of " The 
Griffin and the Minor Canon ; " the whole of the 
north-eastern coast of Asia is occupied with a 
creature half -bear, half -boar, with an appendage 
like the trunk of an elephant for a tail; while a 
gigantic serpent reclines at ease where now the 
waters of the Pacific wash the shores of China and 
Japan. This alarming practice on the part of 
these ignorant but well-meaning gentry is referred 
to by Plutarch, where he says that " geographers 
crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the 
world which they do not know about, adding 
notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this 
lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts 
and unapproachable bogs." Even in our own day 
a vast area of the United States, long labeled 
"The Great American Desert" has been proved 
to be in large part a veritable garden of loveliness. 
Nor were the travellers themselves one whit behind 



62 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

the geographers in aseribmg hideous dangers to 
the regions beyond which they had ventured. 
For a long time Cape Bojador was the extreme 
southern Hmit of discovery. This cape was for- 
midable in itself, being terminated by a ridge of 
rocks, with fierce currents surging round them, 
but was much more formidable from the fancies 
which the mariners had formed of the sea and 
land beyond it. " It is clear," they were wont 
to say, " that beyond this cape there are no people 
whatever ; the land is bare — no water, no trees, 
no grass upon it ; the sea so shallow that at a 
league from the land it is only a fathom deep ; 
the currents so fierce that the ship which passes 
that cape will never return." 

It is scarcely possible for us to put ourselves in 
the place of the men of the fifteenth century. 
" Geographical knowledge," says Sir Arthur 
Helps, the writer just quoted, " was but just 
awakening after ages of slumber ; and through- 
out those ages the wildest dreams had mingled 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 63 

fiction with fact. Legends telling of monsters of 
the deep, jealous of invasion of their territory ; of 
rocks of lodestone, powerful enough to extract 
every particle of iron from a passing ship ; of 
stagnant seas and fiery skies ; of wandering saints 
and flying islands ; all combined to invest the 
unknown with the terrors of the supernatural and 
to deter the explorer of the great ocean. The 
half-decked vessels that crept along the Mediter- 
ranean shores were but ill-fitted to bear the brunt 
of the furious waves of the Atlantic. The now 
indispensable sextant was but clumsily anticipated 
by the newly invented astrolabe. The use of the 
compass had scarcely become familiar to naviga- 
tors, who indeed but imperfectly understood its 
properties. And who could tell, it was objected, 
that a ship which might succeed in sailing down 
the waste of waters would ever be able to return, 
for would not the voyage home be a perpetual 
journey up a mountain of sea ? " 

The truth of the proposition that the earth 



64 COL XIMB US TJSM NA VlGA tOU. 

was a sphere as yet found but few acceptors. 
Many of these shared the above behef as to the 
fate awaiting the ship which should tempt fate 
by saiHng too far down the inchne ; those who 
clung to the more orthodox idea that the earth 
was a flat plane enjoyed an equally comforting 
opinion that he who ventured to the edge thereof 
would fall off into space. 

Columbus, of course, in common with the other 
master minds of his time, believed in the spheri- 
city of the earth, but he and they were not the 
first to entertain that belief. Writing in 1356, a 
hundred and thirty-six years before the re-discovery 
of America, staunch old Sir John Mandeville, the 
great traveller, put forth the following logical 
argument in favor of a round world : 

" In that land and in others beyond no man 
may see the fixed star of the North which we call 
Lode Star. But there men see another star called 
the Antarctic, opposite to the star of the North. 
And just as mariners in this hemisphere take their 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 65 

reckoning and govern their course by the North 
Star, so do the mariners of the South by the 
Antarctic. But the star of the North appears not 
to the people of the South. Wherefore men may 
easily perceive that the land and the sea are of 
round shape and figure. For that part of the 
firmament which is seen in one country is not 
seen in another. And men may prove both by 
expeiience and sound reasoning that if a man, 
having passage by ship, should go to search the 
world, he might with his vessel sail around the 
world, both above and under it. This proposi- 
tion I prove as follows : I have myself in Prussia 
seen the North Star by the astrolabe fifty-three 
degrees above the horizon. Further on in Bo- 
hemia it rises to the height of fifty-eight degrees. 
And still farther northward it is sixty-two de- 
grees and some minutes high. I myseK have so 
measured it. Now the South Pole Star, is, as I 
have said, opposite the North Pole Star. And 
about these poles the whole celestial sphere 



66 COLUMBUS THE ^AVIC^ATOR. 

i*evolves like a wheel about the axle; and the 
firmament is thus divided into two equal parts. 
From the North I have turned southward, passed 
the equator, and found that in Lybia the Ant- 
arctic Star first appears above the horizon. Far- 
ther on in those lands that star rises higher, until 
in southern Lybia it reaches the height of eigh- 
teen degrees and certain minutes, sixty minutes 
making a degree. After going by sea and by 
land towards that country (Australia perhaps) of 
which I have spoken, I have found the Antarctic 
Star more than thirty-three degrees above the 
horizon. A7id if I had had company and ship- 
ping to go still farther, I know of a certainty 
that I should have seen the whole circumference 
of the heavens. And I repeat that men may en- 
viron the whole world, as well under as above, 
and return to their own country, if they had 
company, and ships, and conduct. And always, 
as well as in their own land, shall they find in- 
habited continents and islands. For know you 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR . 67 

well, that they who dwell in the southern hemi- 
sphere are feet against feet of them who dwell in 
the northern hemisphere, just as we and they 
that dwell under us are feet to feet. For every 
part of the sea and the land hath its antipode. 
Moreover, when men go on a journey toward 
India and the foreign islands, they do, on the 
whole route, circle the circumference of the 
earth, even to those countries which are under us. 
And therefore hath that same thing, which I 
heard recited when I was young, happened many 
times. Howbeit, upon a time, a worthy man de- 
parted from our country to explore the world. 
And so he passed India and the islands beyond 
India — more than five thousand in number — and 
so long he went by sea and land, environing the 
world for many seasons, that he found an island 
where he heard them speaking his own language, 
hallooing at the oxen in the plow with the iden- 
tical Avords spoken to beasts in his own country. 
Forsooth, he was astonished ; for he knew not 



68 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

how the thing might happen. But I assure you 
that he had gone so far hy land and sea that he 
had actually gone round the Avorld and was come 
again through the long circuit to his own dis- 
trict. It only remained for him to go forth and 
find his particular neighborhood. Unfortunately 
he turned from the coast which he had reached, 
and thereby lost all his painful labor, as he him- 
self afterwards acknowledged Avhen he returned 
home. For it happened by and by that he went 
into Norway, being driven thither by a storm ; 
and there he recognized an island as being the 
same in Avhich he had heard men calling the oxen 
in his own tongue ; and that was a possible thing. 
And yet it seemeth to simple, unlearned rustics 
that men may not go around the world, and if 
they did they ivould fall off! But that absurd 
thing never could happen unless we ourselves 
from where we are should fall toward heaven ! 
For upon what part soever of the earth men 
dwell, whether above or under, it always seemeth 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 69 

to them that they walk more perpendicularly 
than other folks ! And just as it seemeth to us 
that our antipodes are under us head downwards, 
just so it seemeth to them that we are under 
them head downwards. If a man might fall 
from the earth towards heaven, hy much more 
reason the earth itself, being so heavy, should fall 
to heaven — an impossible thing. Perhaps of a 
thousand men who should go round the world, 
not one might succeed in returning to his own 
particular neighborhood. For the earth is indeed 
a body of great size, its circumference being — 
according to the old wise astronomers — twenty 
thousand four hundred and twenty-five miles. 
And I do not reject their estimates ; but accord- 
ing to my judgment, saving their reverence, the 
circumference of the earth is somewhat more 
than that. And in order to have a clearer under- 
standing of the matter, I use the following de- 
monstration. Let there be imagined a great 
sphere, and about the point called the center an- 



70 C0LU2IBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

other smaller sphere. Then from different parts 
of the great sphere let lines be drawn meeting at 
the center. It is clear that by this means the two 
spheres will be divided into an equal number of 
parts having the same relation to each other ; but 
between the divisions on the smaller sphere the 
absolute space will be less. Now the great sphere 
represents the heavens and the smaller sphere the 
earth. But the firmament is di\dded by astron- 
omers into twelve Signs, and each Sign into 
thirty degrees, making three hundred and sixty 
degrees in all. On the surface of the earth there 
will be, of course, divisions exactly corresponding 
to those of the celestial sphere, every line, degree, 
and zone of the latter answering to a Hue, degree, 
or zone of the former. And now know well that 
according to the authors of astronomy seven 
hundred furlongs, or eighty-seven miles and four 
furlongs, answer to a degree of the firmament. 
Multiplpng eighty-seven and a half miles by three 
hundred and sixty — the number of degrees in the 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 71 

firmament — we have thirty- one thousand five 
hundred EngHsh miles. And this according to 
my belief and demonstration is the true measure- 
ment of the circumference of the earth." If the 
astronomers and geographers of the day had 
given Sir John the correct measurement of a 
degree of latitude he would not have mis-stated 
the circumference of our globe by as much as ten 
miles ! 

But Europe was now at the dawning of a new 
day. With a mighty hand, as when the skies 
clear after storm, the clouds of ignorance and 
superstition were about to be swept away. 

For historical purposes what is known as the 
Dark Ages comprise the thousand years from the 
invasion of France by Clovis in 4,86 to that of 
Naples by Charles YIII. in 1495, or from the 
date of the transfer of the imperial dignity from 
Eome to Constantinople in 476 down to the in- 
vention of printing 1438-42. Although the 
period covered by the term " Dark Ages " is at 



72 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

best an arbitrary one, the latter event would seem 
to signaKze more fittingly the conclusion of the 
period of ignorance and bigotry, and to usher in 
the centuries which should be dominated by a 
New Europe. The weary old world was ripe for 
something new. 

" While the sun of chivalry set and the expir- 
ing energies of f eudahsm ebbed away ; while the 
elder Capets gave place to the Houses of Valois 
and Orleans in France ; and while the bloody 
wars of Lancaster and York made England deso- 
late and barren, the mystery of the Atlantic still 
lay unsolved under the shadows of the West. 
At last Louis XL rose above the ruins of feudal 
France, and Henry YH. over the fragments of 
broken England. In Spain, Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, expeUing both the Jew and the Moham- 
medan, consolidated the kingdom and prepared 
the way for the Spanish ascendency in the time 
of their grandeur." 

At this juncture there appeared — a Man — 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 73 

Prince Henry of Portugal, who boasted one of 
tlie most enlightened minds of his time. 

" This prince was born in 1394. He was the 
third son of John the First of Portugal and 
Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke 
of Lancaster. That good Plantagenet blood on 
the mother's side was, doubtless, not without 
avail to a man whose life was to be spent in con- 
tinuous and insatiate efforts to work out a 
great idea. Prince Henry was with his father at 
the memorable capture of Ceuta, the ancient Sep- 
lem, in the year 1415. This town, which lies 
opposite to Gibraltar, was of great ma nificence, 
and one of the principal marts in that age for 
the productions of the eastern world. It was 
here that the Portuguese first planted a firm 
foot in Africa; and the date of this town's 
capture may, perhaps, be taken as that from 
which Prince Henry began to meditate further 
and far greater conquests. His aims, however, 
were directed to a point long beyond the range 



74 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

of the mere conquering soldier. He was especially 
learned for that age of the world, being skilled 
in mathematical and geographical knowledge. 
He eagerly acquired from the Moors of Fez and 
Morocco such scanty information as could be 
gathered concerning the remote districts of Africa. 
The shrewd conjectures of learned men, the con- 
fused records of Arabic geographers, the fables 
of chivalry were not without their influence 
upon an enthusiastic mind. The especial reason 
which impelled the prince to take the burden of 
discovery on himself was that neither mariner 
nor merchant would be likely to adopt an enter- 
prise in which there was no clear hope of profit. 
" It belonged, therefore, to great men and 
princes; and among such he knew of no one but 
himself who was inclined to it. This is not an 
uncommon motive. A man sees something that 
ought to be done, knows of no one that will do 
it but himself, and so is driven to the enterprise 
even should it be repugnant to him. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 75 

" Prince Henry, then, having once the well- 
grounded idea in his mind that Africa did not 
end, according to the common belief, at Cape 
Nun, but that there was a region beyond that 
forbidding negative, seems never to have rested 
until he had made known that quarter of the 
world to his own." 

It is not unworthy of a few moments' digres- 
sion to remark that when, in 1486, the Portu- 
guese navigator, Bartholomew de Diaz, re-dis- 
covered the southern promontory of the African 
continent, and named it " Cabo Tormentoso," 
" Cape of Storms," he did but revive the old appel- 
lation by which, entirely unknown to him, of 
course, the Cape of Good Hope had been known 
to the maritime adventurers of nearly two thou- 
sand years before. 

" Ke-discovered " we say advisedly and with 
ample authority. There is every reason to be- 
lieve that, long before our records of modern 



76 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

discovery commence, the circumnavigation of 
Africa was accomplished. 

About 600 years before Christ there reigned on 
the throne of Egypt, Necho, the, king who 
commenced the famous canal between the Nile 
and the Arabian Gulf, which enterprise, by the way, 
was abandoned after costing the lives of 120,000 
men. 

At this time, and in fact throughout the ancient 
world, Africa was believed to be surrounded by 
water oij all sides, except at the narrow neck now 
traversed by the Suez Canal. But the precise 
conformation of the southern part was an un- 
solved problem, and was deemed to be " an un- 
discovered country from whose bourne no travel- 
ler returned." In that age of superstition and 
idolatry the most fabulous stories were current 
about what was unknown. So that it is not 
strange that exaggerated representations of the 
dangers to be encountered, of the frightful 
coasts, and of the stormy and boundless ocean 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR . 77 

supposed to stretch to the confines of earth's 
surface, were rife, and were recounted again, and 
yet again, in the hearing of the credulous mar- 
iners whose only experience of Neptune's fury 
was within the narrow limits of the '^ Magna 
Mare " of the Romans. 

The Phoenicians were at that date the mari- 
ners par excellence of the whole known world ; 
their enterprise and adventurous spirits led them 
far past the Pillars of Hercules, those grim 
guardians on the threshold of the Atlantic, even 
to the shores of Britain. Their high-sterned, 
single-masted craft were to be seen in the waters 
of every sea then known ; they enrolled them- 
selves under the banner of any monarch or king- 
dom who would make it sufficiently to their 
interest, and among those whom they served 
was the before-mentioned Necho, King of Egypt. 
Herodotus, whose writings cover such an im- 
portant era in the world's history, viz., the cen- 
turies preceding the Nativity at Bethlehem, gives a 



78 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

most interesting account of what was undoubtedly 
a great feat, and from it and other sources we 
learn that when Necho at last desisted from 
opening a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, he 
cast about him for some other kingly enterprise. 
Accordingly "he sent certain Phoenicians in 
ships with orders to pass by the Columns of 
Hercules into the sea that lies to the north of 
Africa, and thus return to Egypt. These Phoeni- 
cians thereupon set sail from the Red Sea and 
entered into the Southern Ocean. They sailed 
south for many months. On the approach ol 
autumn they landed in Africa, and planted some 
grain in the quarter to which they had come ; 
when this was ripe and they had cut it down, 
they put to sea again. Having spent two years 
in this way, they in the third passed the Col- 
umns of Hercules and returned to Egypt." Now 
comes what is to us the strange part of the 
narrative of Herodotus, but at the same time the 
best confirmation we could wish that he was not 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 79 

relating a mere " sailor's yarn," as he himseK 
evidently believes. He goes on to say : " Their 
relations may obtain credit with some, but to me it 
seems impossible of belief; for they affirmed 
that, as they sailed around the coast of Africa, 
they had the sun on their right hand!" But to 
us who bask in the revelations of modern science, 
the report which Herodotus thought so fabulous 
as to throw discredit upon the entire narrative, 
namely, that in passing round Africa they found 
the sun on their right, afi^ords to us the strong- 
est presumption in favor of its truth. Such a 
statement as this could never have been imao-ined 
in an age when the science of astronomy was in 
its infancy — ^when the earth was believed to be a 
flat plane and the center of the universe. Of 
course, after having passed the Cape of Good 
Hope, and turning their prows northward, the 
Phoenicians must have found the sun on their 
right hand. In addition they brought back the 
most fabulous stories of what they saw ; for some 



80 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

of which we are undoubtedly indebted to their 
imagination. 

It is true that many writers have labored to 
prove that the voyage in all probability never took 
place, urging as their chief objections that the 
time occupied was too short in that age of slow 
and cautious saihng, when it was customary to 
sail only by day, and to anchor at night ; and also 
that the undertaking was one for which the 
Phoenician galleys of the time were entirely un- 
fitted. On the other hand, some of the best 
authorities are agreed that such a feat was not 
only possible, but that it actually took place, else 
how could the voyagers have returned to their 
starting-point from an opposite direction to that 
in which they set out, and how did they come to 
observe the sun on their right hand ? It is suf- 
ficient to say that these questions have never been 
answered. 

After diligent study of the writings of the an- 
cients, Prince Henry came to the conclusion that 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. gj 

the continent of Africa could be circumnavigated 
to the southward. It is true that " the possibiHty 
of circumnavigating Africa, after being for a long 
time admitted by geographers, was denied by 
--^""^Hipparchus, who considered each sea shut up and 
land-bound in its peculiar basin ; and that Africa 
was a continent continuing onward to the south 
pole, and surrounding the Indian sea, so as to 
join Asia beyond the Ganges. This opinion had 
been adopted by Ptolemy, whose works, in the 
time of Prince Henry, were the highest authority in 
geography. The prince, however, clung to the 
ancient belief, that Africa was circumnavigable, 
and found his opinion sanctioned by various learned 
men of more modern date. To settle this ques- 
tion, and achieve the circumnavigation of Africa, 
was an object worthy the ambition of a prince, and 
his mind was fired with the idea of the vast benefits 
that would arise to his country should it be 
accomplished by Portuguese enterprise." 

" The discovery of America by Columbus," says 



82 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

Professor John Fiske, " was due to the shifting of 
the lines of Asiatic trade on aeconnt of the encroach- 
ment of the Turks. Ever since the Crusades the 
routes by way of the Mediterranean Sea as well 
as the overland paths for caravans, had been much 
traveled. In 1453 the Mussulmans captured the 
seat of the Eastern Empire and thus the sultan's 
sway became wider. The avenues of trade were 
closed, although the volume of commerce in this 
direction was swelling. The merchants of Genoa, 
Pisa, Florence, and other places were compelled to 
seek new routes. At this time two opposite 
views as to the shape of the earth were current. 
That of Pomponius Mela af&rmed that land to 
the southward ceased with the Sahara Desert, 
while Claudius Ptolemy held that the earth ex- 
tended to the south pole ; thus denying that Af- 
rica was circumnavigable. It was natural for the 
Portuguese to start the movement toward finding 
new passages, as they were the first people after 
the Northmen to engage in distant commerce." 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 83 

For over a century the Lombards had monop- 
oHzed the overland trade with Africa ; the repubhcs 
of Venice and Genoa owed their Avealth and import- 
ance to this trade ; and while very profitable to 
these merchants, the heavy cost of land carriage 
greatly enhanced the value of the articles brought 
from India and the East. " It was the grand 
idea of Prince Henry, by circumnavigating Africa, 
to open a direct and easy route to the source of 
this commerce ] to turn it in a golden tide upon 
his country. He was, however, before the age in 
thought, and had to counteract ignorance and 
prejudice, and to endure the delays to which 
vivid and penetrating minds are subjected from 
the tardy co-operation of the dull and the doubt- 
ful. The navigation of the Atlantic was yet in 
its infancy. Mariners looked with distrust upon 
a boisterous expanse, which appeared to have no 
opposite shore, and feared to venture out of sight 
of the landmarks. Every bold headland and far- 
stretching promontory was a wall to bar their 



84 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

progress. They crept timorously along the Bar- 
bary shores, and thought they had accomplished a 
wonderful expedition when they had ventured a 
few degrees beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. 
Cape Nun was long the limit of their daring ; 
they hesitated to double its rocky point, beaten 
by winds and threatening to thrust them forth 
upon the raging deep. 

" Independent of these vague fears, they had 
others, sanctioned by philosophy itself. They 
still thought that the earth at the equator was 
girdled by a torrid zone, over which the sun held 
his vertical and fiery course, separating the hemi- 
spheres by a region of impassive heat. They 
fancied Cape Bojador the utmost boundary of 
secure enterprise, and fostered a superstitious behef 
that whoever doubled it would never return. 
They looked with dismay upon the rapid currents 
of its neighborhood, and the furious surf which 
beat upon its arid coast. They imagined that 
beyond it lay the frightful region of the torrid 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 85 

zone, scorched by a blazing sun ; a region of fire, 
where the very waves, which beat upon the shores, 
boiled under the intolerable fervor of the heavens. 

" To dispel these errors, and to give a scope to 
na^dgation equal to the grandeur of his designs. 
Prince Henry estabhshed a naval college, and 
erected an observatory at Sagres, and he invited 
thither the most eminent professors of the nautical 
sciences ; appointing as president James of Mal- 
lorca, a man learned in navigation, and skillful 
in making charts and instruments. 

" The effects of this establishment were soon 
apparent. All that was known relative to geogra 
phy and navigation was gathered together and 
reduced to system. A vast improvement took 
place in maps. The compass was also brought 
into more general use, 'especially among the Por- 
tuguese, rendering the mariner more bold and 
venturous, by enabling him to navigate in the most 
gloomy day and in the darkest night. Encour- 
aged by these advantages, and stimulated by the 



86 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

munificence of Prince Henry, the Portuguese 
marine became signalized for the hardihood of 
its enterprises and the extent of its discoveries. 
Cape Bojador was doubled ; the region of the 
tropics penetrated, and divested of its fancied 
terrors ; the greater part of the African coast, 
from Cape Blanco to Cape de Yerde, explored ; 
and the Cape de Verde and Azores Islands, which 
lay three hundred leagues distant from the conti- 
nent, were rescued from the oblivious empire of 
the ocean. To secure the quiet prosecution and 
full enjoyment of his discoveries, Henry obtained 
the protection of a papal bull, granting to the 
crown of Portugal sovereign authority over all 
the lands it might discover in the Atlantic, to 
India inclusive, with plenary indulgence to all 
who should die in these expeditions ; at the same 
time menacing with the terrors of the Church all 
who should interfere in these Christian conquests. 
" Henry died on the 13th of November, 1473, 
without accomplishing the great object of his 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 87 

ambition. It was not until many years after- 
wards, that Yasco da Gama, pursuing* with a Por- 
tuguese fleet the track he had pointed out, realized 
his anticipations by doubling the Cape of Good 
Hope, sailing along the southern coast of India, 
and thus opening a highway for commerce to the 
opulent regions of the East. Henry, however, 
lived long enough to reap some of the richest re- 
wards of a great and good mind. He beheld, 
through his means, his native country in a grand 
and active career of prosperity. The discoveries 
of the Portuguese were the wonder and admira- 
tion of the fifteenth century, and Portugal, from 
being one of the least among nations, suddenly 
rose to be one of the most important. All this 
was effected, not by arms, but by arts ; not by the 
stratagems of a cabinet, but by the wisdom of a 
college. It Avas the great achievement of a prince 
who has well been described as ' full of thoughts 
of lofty enterprise, and acts of generous spirit : ' 
one who bore for his device the magnanimous 



88 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

motto, ' The talent to do good/ the only talent 
worthy the ambition of princes. 

" Henry, at his death, left it in charge to his 
country to prosecute the route to India. He had 
formed companies and associations, by which 
commercial zeal was enhsted in the cause, and it 
was made a matter of interest and competition to 
enterprising individuals. From time to time Lis- 
bon was thrown into a tumult of excitement by 
the launching forth of some new expedition, or 
the return of a squadron with accounts of new 
tracts explored and new kingdoms visited. 
Everything was confident promise and sanguine 
anticipation. The miserable hordes of the African 
coast were magnified into powerful nations, and 
the voyagers continually heard of opulent coun- 
tries farther on. It was as yet the twihght of 
geographic knowledge ; imagination went hand in 
hand with discovery, and as the latter groped its 
slow and cautious way, the former peopled all 
beyond with wonders. The fame of the Portu- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 89 

guese discoveries, and of the expeditions continu- 
ally setting out, drew the attention of the world. 
Strangers from all parts, the learned, the curious, 
and the adventurous, resorted to Lisbon to inquire 
into the particulars or to participate in the advan- 
tages of these enterprises. Among these was 
Christopher Columbus/' 



90 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 



CHAPTER III. 

^CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

" Honor and shame from no condition rise, — 
Act well your part, there all the honor lies." 

We have seen that the world was ripe for a 
great discovery, or a series of great discoveries. 
Not alone in the realm of action and enterprise, 
pioneered by the Portuguese, were new vistas 
opening up, but the whole field of intellectual 
speculation and deduction was in a ferment, and 
men's minds as well as men's bodies imperatively 
demanded new worlds to conquer. What won- 
der, then, that the Western riddle should be 
chosen as one of the first for solution ! All that 
was wanted was the Man, and he now appeared. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 91 

" Whether in old times, beyond the reach of 
history or tradition, and in some remote period of 
civilization, when, as some imagine, the arts may 
have flourished to a degree unknown to those 
whom we term the Ancients, there existed an 
intercourse between the opposite shores of the 
Atlantic ; whether the Egyptian legend, narrated 
by Plato, respecting the island of Atlantis was 
indeed no fable, but the obscure tradition of some 
vast country, engulfed by one of those mighty con- 
vulsions of our globe, which have left traces of 
the ocean on the summits of lofty mountains, must 
ever remain matters of vague and visionary spec- 
ulation. As far as authenticated history extends, 
nothing was known of terra firma and the islands 
of the Western hemisphere until their discovery 
towards the close of the fifteenth century. A 
wandering bark may occasionally have lost sight 
of the landmarks of the old continents, and been 
driven by tempest across the wilderness of waters 
long before the invention of the compass, but 



92 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

never returned to reveal the secrets of the ocean. 
And though^ from time to time, some strange 
flotsam came to the shores of the old world, giv- 
ing to its wondering inhabitants evidences of land 
far beyond their watery horizon, yet no one ven- 
tured to spread a sail, and seek that land envel- 
oped in mystery and peril. The Scandinavian 
voyagers had but transient glimpses of the new 
world, leading to no certain or permanent knowl- 
edge, and in a little time lost again to mankind. 
Certain it is that at the beginning of the fifteenth 
century, when the most intelligent minds were 
seeking in every direction for the scattered lights 
of geographical knowledge, a profound ignorance 
prevailed among the learned as to the western 
regions of the Atlantic ; its vast waters were 
regarded with awe and wonder, seeming to bound 
the world as with a chaos, into which conjecture 
could not penetrate and enterprise feared to 
adventure. We need no greater proofs of this 
than the description given of the Atlantic by 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 93 

Xerif al Edrisi, surnamed The Nubian, an emi- 
nent Arabian writer, whose countrymen were the 
boldest navigators of the middle ages, and pos- 
sessed all that was then known of geography. 
The ' ocean ' he observes, ' encircles the ultimate 
bounds of the inhabited earth, and all beyond it 
is unknown. No one has been able to verify any- 
thing concerning it, on account of its difficult and 
perilous navigation, its great obscurity, its pro- 
found depth, and frequent tempests ; through 
fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty winds ; 
yet there are many islands in it, — some peopled, 
others uninhabited. There is no mariner who 
dares to enter into its deep waters; or, if any 
have done so, they have merely kept along its 
coasts fearful of departing from them. The waves 
of this ocean, although they roll as high as 
mountains, yet maintain themselves without break- 
ing ; for if they broke, it would be impossible for 
a ship to plough them." 

The foregoing paragraph contains the opening 



94 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

words of Irving' s noble biography of the mariner 
of Genoa, and they aptly describe the atmosphere 
of doubt in which the age was enveloped concern- 
ing the Great Unknown across the Western 
Ocean. 

It might be said of Columbus, as was said of 
Homer, that " seven rival cities claim his birth." 
Upward of " fifteen towns and villages claim to be 
the birthplace of the renowned discoverer of the 
New World," says a recent reviewer. Ten or 
more of them are on the Ligurian coast ; but 
beyond the Apennines are Casserca, Cuzzare in 
the Montf errat, Pradello near Piacenza, and there 
is also Calvi in Corsica. Spotorno argued that no 
place outside the Genoese territory deserved con- 
sideration, and the upshot of Tarducci's researches 
is that he was born in the city of Genoa itself. 
Yet the Abba Casanova, a Corsican archaeologist, 
has discovered archives which are thought to show 
that Columbus was born in Calvi and emigrated to 
Genoa 3 and it is said that an inscription has been 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 95 

put on a house in the former city as his birth- 
place. Henry Harrisse has been able to count up 
eighteen ItaHan towns claiming to be the birth- 
place of Columbus, and has amusingly discussed 
their pretensions. But the claim of Savona, not 
far from Genoa, seemed to him worthy of erudite 
refutation, which he has been able to furnish from 
documents preserved at Savona and relating to the 
business of Christopher's father. Of course, the 
well-known will of Columbus would seem to settle 
the whole question in two of its phrases : " I, being 
born in Genoa," and " since I came from and 
was born in it. " But the authenticity of the 
document was disputed until Navarette came to 
Genoa's aid with proofs of its genuineness. Still, 
Calvi or any other claimant may say that Colum- 
bus was in error, and Americans will recall that so 
illustrious a man as the late General Sheridan had 
always supposed his birthplace to be in a little 
Ohio town, up to a year or two before his death, 
when he unexpectedly learned that he first saw the 



' 96 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

light in Albany, in New York State. The date of 
the great sailor's birth is no less widely disputed 
than the place. The difference of opinion on this 
point covers the full quarter of a century beween 
1430 and 1456, while between 1435 and 1449 
every year has had its advocate. Prof. Tarducci 
thinks the three dates of greatest probability are 
1436, 1446, and 1456, and of these prefers the 
first, because it rests on the authority of Bernal- 
dez, who had Columbus as a guest, and mentions 
that at his death, which occurred in 1506, he was 
verging on his 70th year. And yet still later than 
this conclusion of Tarducci we find Harrisse, in 
the Remte Historiqiie, quoting from a manuscript, 
dated Oct. 30, 1470, recently discovered in the 
Genoa archives, this memorandum : " Christofferus 
de Columbo, filius Dominici, major annis decem- 
novem." Putting this with sundry other facts 
Harrisse regards it as certain that Columbus could 
not have been born before 1446 nor after 1451, 
with the probability that his birth took place 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 97 

between March 25, 1446, and March 20, 1447. 
" Another disputed point concerns the early life 
and education of Columbus. Three of his fellow- 
countrymen and contemporaries, Galli Giustiniani, 
and Senarega, agree that he was taught only the 
elementary branches, and GaUi says that he 
worked at the trade of his father, Domenico, who 
was a wool carder. But Fernandcj^the younger 
son of the great Admiral, who wrote a history of 
his father, which was marred by efforts to shed 
lustre on his obscure origin, says he studied at 
Pavia. From that single guarded phrase has 
sprung the theory that he was a student at the 
university, and this institution put up a monument 
to its putative pupil. But Tarducci, resting on 
the fact that he certainly went to sea at the age 
of 14, and probably worked in his father's shop 
before that time, rejects the whole myth of a uni- 
versity education. Indeed, Domenico and Su- 
sanna Columbo, who had three other sons to pro- 
vide for, Bartholomew, Pellegrino and Diego, and 



98 COL UMB ITS THJE NA VIGA TOR. 

a daughter who married Bavarello, the cheese- 
monger, had not means enough to support a son 
at the famous Lombard university. But, admit- 
ting his lack of scholastic education, it is all the 
greater proof of the genius of Columbus, that, 
busy mariner as he was from his boyhood, he 
became not only one of the best cosmographers of 
his day, but a man versed in ecclesiastical hterature 
and in general science. Of his acquired learning 
we get incontrovertible proof in his journals kept 
aboard ship, where, without books to aid him, he 
repeatedly cited authors and passages to support 
his theories." 

Christopher Columbus, or Christoforo Colombo, 
as the name is written in Italian, was, then, a 
Genoese. Although his father was a wool- 
comber, some of his ancestors had been navigators 
in the service of Genoa and France. But this 
relationship is allowed to have been a rather remote 
one, and, as his son and biographer remarks, the 
glory of the greatest admiral of them all " is 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 99 

quite enough without there being any necessity to 
borrow any from his forebears." 

" At a very early age he became a student at 
the University of Pavia, where he laid the found- 
ations of that knowledge of mathematics and 
natural science which stood him in good stead 
throughout his life. At Genoa he would natu- 
rally regard the sea as the great field of enterprise 
which produced harvests of rich wares and spoils 
of glorious victories ; and he may have heard, now 
and then, news of the latest conclusions of the 
Arabic geographers at Sennaar, and rumors of 
explorations down the African coast, which would 
be sure to excite interest among the maritime 
population of his birthplace. It is not wonderful 
that, exposed to such influences, he preferred a 
life of adventure on the sea to the drudgery of 
his father's trade in Genoa. Accordingly, after 
a few irksome months as a carder of wool {tector 
panni)y he entered on his nautical career before 
he was fifteen years old, 



100 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

" Of his many voyages, which of them took 
place before, and which after, his coming to Por- 
tugal, we have no distinct record; but are sure 
that he traversed a large part of the known world, 
that he visited England, that he made his way to 
Iceland and Friesland, that he had been at El 
Mina, on the coast of Guinea, and that he had 
seen the Islands of the Grecian Archipelago. ' I 
have been seeking out the secrets of nature for 
forty years,' he says, ' and wherever ship has 
sailed, there I have voyaged.' But beyond a few 
vague allusions of this kind, we know scarcely 
anything of these early voyages. However, he 
mentions particularly his having been employed by 
King Rene of Provence to intercept a Venetian 
galliot. And this exploit furnishes illustrations 
both of his boldness and his tact. During the 
voyage the news was brought that the galliot was 
convoyed by three other vessels. Thereupon the 
crew were unwilling to hazard an engagement, 
and insisted that Columbus should return to Mar- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 101 

seilles for reinforcement. Columbus made a feint 
of acquiescence, but craftily arranged the compass 
so that it appeared that they were returning, while 
they were really steering their original course, and 
so arrived at Carthagena the next morning, think- 
ing all the while that they were in f uU sail for 
Marseilles." 

There are no very good or authentic portraits 
of Columbus extant, as might perhaps be expected. 
This much, however, seems to be certain — that he 
was tall of stature and dignified in bearing, with 
a long oval countenance, an aquihne nose, and ex- 
pressive light gray eyes. His hair and complex- 
ion were fair ; the former turned white while 
he was yet in the prime of life. His manners 
were grave, courteous, and winning. He was at 
once resolute and humane ; courag^eous and com- 
passionate. He was simple, unafPected, and deeply 
rehgious. To his superiors he was unflinchingly 
honest and loyal, and he endeavored to command 
alike obedience in turn from those placed under 



102 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

his command. There are dark and dubious facts 
and passages in his life ; he has been called pirate, 
buccaneer, and slave-driver. But he lived in a 
period of storm and stress ; his faults were those 
of his time and of those w^aom he served. In 
saying that he was brave, steadfast, with the rough 
honor of a bluff old sea-dog, we complete the 
portrait outHnes of a veritable Bayard of the Seas ; 
and if his enthusiasm for his own beliefs some- 
times deafened and blinded him to more prudent 
counsels, he remained in adversity, and in pros- 
perity, and in adversity again, a knight without 
fear and without reproach."^ 



* In answering the query " Was Columbus a Jew ?" the Jewish 
World says : ' ' Jews figure prominently in the history of the dis- 
covery of America. The plans and calculations of Columbus' ex- 
pedition were largely the work of two Hebrew astronomers and 
mathematicians. Two Jews were also employed as interpreters by 
Columbus, and one of them, Luiz de Torres, was the first Euro- 
pean to set foot in the New World. When Columbus sighted the 
island of San Salvador he sent Torres, who was engaged for his 
knowledge of the Arabic, ashore to make inquiries of the natives. 
It was probably this Torres who was the Madrid Jew to whom 
Columbus bequeathed half a mark of silver in his will. 

" Another curious fact is that it has been curiously suggested — 
by Franz Delitzsch, we believe — that Columbus himself was a Jew 




The Tanez Portrait of Christopher Columbus. 



I 






COL TIME U8 THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 03 

The portrait which precedes this page has a 
curious and interesting history. In 1763, a por- 
trait of Columbus, with those o£ Cortez, Lope, and 
Quevedo, was purchased by the Spanish Govern- 
ment from N. Yanez, who had brought it from 
Granada. No trace of any such picture having 
been at an earlier period in the Royal Picture Gal- 
lery has been detected, so long was the revealer of 
the Western Hemisphere unappreciated in Castile 
and Leon. This Yanez likeness was hung in the 
National Library (Biblioteca Naerona) and soon 
confessed by art critics to resemble closely in 
features that in the Florentine Uffizi — the oldest 
of known date, and that from which Jefferson's 



or of Jewish birth. The name of Christopher was frequently- 
adopted by converts, while the surname, Colon, belonged to a dis- 
tinguished family of Jewish scholars. Christopher's father, Diego, 
bore originally the Jewish name Jacob, which sounds surprisingly 
like Shem Kadosh. Perhaps, during the coming celebrations, some 
Jewish scholars in Italy will make inquiry into the validity of this 
'daring suggestion." 

But we think there is no valid ground for such a supposition re- 
garding the faith of Columbus. Jew by descent he may have been, 
but he was a devout and loyal son of Mother Church, and died in 
the full odor of sanctity. 



1 04 COL UMB lis THE NA VIGA TOB. 

copy had been taken. It was highly praised by 
Navarrete, in his grand work, which is a nobler 
monument to Columbus than the labor of an age 
in piled stones. 

But Spanish artists were long ago satisfied that 
the Yanez portrait had been tampered with by 
some audacious restorer, and they at length ob- 
tained permission to test it with chemicals. From 
side to side of the upper margin of the picture 
there ran the legend " Christof . Columbus nori 
(sic) orhis inventorJ^ These words were first 
subjected to the artist's test, and as they vanished, 
quite another inscription came out beneath them, 
namely, these words, " Colomb. Lygur. nom orhis 
reptor " (sic). The variations not only proved 
that the likeness had been repainted, but that the 
second painter was inferior to the first, since re- 
pertor means to find by seeking, which inventor 
does not. The testers had no hesitation about 
proceeding further. The flowing robe with 
a heavy fur collar, as they said, " more befitting a 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 105 

Muscovite than a mariner," vanished, while a 
simple garb, only a closely fitting tunic, and a 
mantle folded across the breast, rose to view. 
The eyes, nose, lower lip, facial oval, all assumed 
a new expression. The air of monastic sadness 
vanished. Senor Cubello and his assistants, who 
had begun this work nervously, finished it with 
glad surprise when they beheld the great dis- 
coverer throwing off the disguises that had been 
thrust upon him ; and, as it were, emancipated 
from the chains with which he was bound in his 
lifetime, and which were buried in his coffin. 

" As if he whom the asp 
In its marble grasp, 
Kept close and for ages strangled, 
Got loose from the hold 
Of each serpent fold, 
And exulted disentangled." 

Carderara, the great Spanish authority on Co- 
lumbian portraits, regrets that, while sojourning 
at the Lake of Como, he had neglected to search 
in all highways and byways for the likeness that 



106 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

stood in the Museum of Giovio there, and which 
may be stiil lurking in some unsuspected corner. 

But some Spanish investigators hold that 
labors in this direction are needless. Senor Eios y 
Rios, in a recent Bulletin of the Madrid Academy, 
maintains that the long-lost and much desiderated 
Giovian portrait — the prototype of which all Co- 
lumbian likenesses of any value are copies — has 
been found already. He holds that the Yanez 
portrait is nothing less than that Giovian jewel. 
He adduces many circumstances which serve to 
thicken other proofs of his position. Let us trust 
that this discovery of the great discoverer, which 
was as unlooked for as his discovery of America, 
may prove as indubitable. 

" Columbus," says Irving, " commenced his 
nautical career when about fourteen years of age. 
His first voyages were made with a distant relative 
named Colombo, a hardy veteran of the seas, who 
had risen to some distinction by his bravery, and 
is occasionally mentioned in old chronicles ; some- 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 107 

times as commanding a squadron of his own, some- 
times as an admiral in the Genoese service. He 
appears to have been bold and adventurous ; ready 
to fight in any cause, and to seek quarrel wherever 
it might lawfully be found. The seafaring life 
of the Mediterranean, in those days, was hazardous 
and daring. A commercial expedition resembled 
a warlike cruise, and the maritime nierchant had 
often to fight his way from port to port. Piracy 
was almost legaHzed. The frequent feuds be- 
tween the Italian states ; the cruisings of the 
Catalonians ; the armadas fitted out by private 
noblemen, who exercised a kind of sovereignty in 
their own domains, and kept petty armies and 
navies in their pay ; the roving ships and squad- 
rons of private adventurers, a kind of naval 
Condottieri, sometimes employed by hostile govern- 
ments, sometimes scouring the seas in search 
of lawless booty; these, with the holy wars 
waged against the Mohammedan powers, ren- 
dered the narrow seas, to which navigation was 



108 COL UMB US THE JSfA VIGA TOR. 

principally confined, scenes of hardy encounters 
and trying reverses. 

" Such was the rugged school in which Co- 
lumbus was reared, and it would have been deeply 
interesting to have marked the early development 
of his genius amidst its stern adversities. All 
this instructive era of liis history, however, is 
covered with darkness. His son Fernando, who 
could have best elucidated it, has left it in ob- 
scurity, or has now and then perplexed us with 
cross lights ; perhaps unwilling, from a principle 
of mistaken pride, to reveal the indigence and 
obscurity from which his father so gloriously 
emerged. The first voyage in which we have any 
account of his being engaged was a naval expedi- 
tion, fitted out in Genoa in 1459 by John of 
Anjou, Duke of Calabria, to make a descent upon 
Naples, in the hope of recovering that kingdom 
for his father. King Reinier, or Ranato, othermse 
called Rene, Count of Provence. The repubHc 
of Genoa aided him with ships and money. The 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 109 

brilliant nature of the enterprise attracted the 
attention of daring and restless spirits. The 
chivalrous nobleman, the soldier of fortune, the 
hardy corsair, the desperate adventurer, the 
mercenary partisan, all hastened to enlist under 
the banner of Anjou. The veteran Colombo took 
a part in this expedition, either with galleys of 
his own, or as a commander of the Genoese squad- 
ron, and with him embarked his youthful relative, 
the future discoverer. The struggle of John of 
Anjou for the crown of Naples lasted about four 
years, with varied fortune, but was finally un- 
successful. The naval part of the expedition, in 
which Columbus was engaged, signalized itself by 
acts of intrepidity ; and at one time, when the 
Duke was reduced to take refuge in the island of 
Ischia, a handful of galleys scoured and con- 
trolled the bay of Naples. 

" In the course of this gallant but ill-fated 
enterprise, Columbus was detached on a perilous 
cruise, to cut out a galley from the harbor of 



110 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

Tunis. This is incidentally mentioned by him- 
self in a letter written many years afterwards. 
^ It happened to me/ he says, ' that King Reinier 
(whom God has taken to himself) sent me to Tunis, 
to capture the galley Fernandina, and when I 
arrived off the island of St. Pedro, in Sardinia, I 
was informed that there were two ships and a car- 
rack with the galley ; by which intelligence my 
crew were so troubled that they determined to 
proceed no further, but to return to Marseilles 
for another vessel and more people ; as I could 
not by any means compel them, I assented appar- 
ently to their wishes, altering the point of the 
compass and spreading all sail. It was then even- 
ing, and next morning we were within the Cape 
of Carthagena, while all were firmly of opinion 
that they were saihng towards Marseilles.' We 
have no further record of this bold cruise into the 
harbor of Tunis ; but in the foregoing particulars 
we behold early indications of that resolute and 
persevering spirit which insured him success in 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 1 1 1 

his more important undertakings. His expedient 
to beguile a discontented crew into a continuation 
of the enterprise, by decei^dng them with respect 
to the ship's course, will be found in unison with 
a stratagem of altering the reckoning, to which 
he had recourse in his first voyage of discovery." 
We have no record of the precise period when 
the thought of his great discovery first entered 
the mind of Columbus. Doubtless it was not of 
sudden birth, but a slow growth, arriving at 
maturity after patient inquiry and research. That 
he made himself thoroughly familiar with the 
scanty literature, the abundant tradition, and the 
foohsh fears surrounding the subject of a west- 
ward voyage, we have ample evidence. " It may 
be a question," says Sir Arthur Helps, " whether 
this impulse soon brought him to his utmost 
height of survey, and that he then only applied 
to learning to confirm his first views ; or whether 
the impulse merely carried him along with grow- 
ing perception of the great truth he was to prove, 



112 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOM. 

into deep thinking upon cosmographical studies, 
the recent Portuguese discoveries, the dreams of 
learned men, the labors of former geographers, the 
dim prophetic notices of great unknown lands, and 
vague reports amongst mariners of driftwood seen 
on the seas. But at any rate we know that he 
arrived at a fixed conclusion that there was a way 
by the west to the Indies ; that he could discover 
this way, and so come to Cipango, Cathay, the 
Grand Khan, and all he had met with in the 
gorgeous descriptions of Marco Polo and other 
ancient authorities. We may not pretend to lay 
down the exact chronological order of the forma- 
tion of the idea in his mind, in fact, to know more 
about it than he would probably have been able 
to tell us himself. And it must not be forgotten 
that his enterprise, as compared Avith that of the 
Portuguese along the coast of Africa, was as an 
invention compared to an improvement. Each 
new discovery, then, was but a step beyond that 
which had preceded it ; Columbus was the first 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 113" 

to steer boldly from shore into the waste of waters, 
— an originator, not a mere improver. Fernando 
Columbus divides into three classes the grounds 
on which his father's theory was based ; namely, 
reasons from nature, the authority of writers, and 
the testimony of sailors. He believed the world 
to be a sphere ; he under-estimated its size ; he 
over-estimated the size of the Asiatic continent. 
The farther that continent extended to the east- 
ward the nearer it came round towards Spain. 
And this, in greater or less degree, had been 
the opinion of the ancient geographers. Both 
Aristotle and Seneca thought that a ship might 
sail " in a few days " from Cadiz to India. Strabo, 
too, believed that it might be possible to navigate 
on the same parallel of latitude, due west from 
the coast of Africa or Spain to that of India. 
The accounts given by Marco Polo and Sir John 
Mandeville of their explorations towards China 
confirmed the exaggerated idea of the extent of 
Eastern Asia. 



114 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

" It appears/' says Laing, " from the Memoii 
of Columbus by his son Fernando, that in Feb- 
ruary, 1477, his father visited Tyle (Thule) or 
Friesland, ' an island as large as England, with 
which the English, especially those of Bristol, 
drive a great trade.' It is a curious coincidence 
that he mentions he came to the island without 
meeting any ice, and the sea was not frozen ; and 
in an authentic document of March in the same 
year, 1477, it is mentioned as a kind of testi- 
mony of the act of which the document is the 
protocol, that there was no snow whatever upon 
the ground at the date it was executed, — a rare 
circumstance, by which it would be held in re- 
membrance. In the year 1477, Magnus Eyolf- 
son was bishop of Skalholt ; he had been abbot 
of the monastery at Helgafel, where the old 
accounts concerning Yinland and Greenland 
were, it is supposed, originally written and pre- 
served, and the discoverers were people originally 
from that neighborhood. Columbus came in 



COL UMB US THE NA VIO A TOB. 115 

spring to the south end of Iceland, where Whale- 
fiord was the usual harbor ; and it is known that 
Bishop Magnus, exactly in the spring of that 
year, was on a visitation in that part of his see, 
and it is to be presumed Columbus must have 
met and conversed with him. These are curious 
coincidences of small circumstances, which have 
their weight." 

As there were certainly Europeans in America 
before the time of Columbus, which we think has 
been proved in an earlier chapter, we may pause 
here to ask how far Columbus or his companions 
profited by the knowledge of these past events 
which undoubtedly existed. 

" More than eight hundred years ago, and 
consequently nearly six hundred years before 
the Puritan Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth 
Eock, the Catholic Church had a bishop there, 
and a martyr, too, for the saintly prelate fell a 
victim to zeal and charity beneath the deadly 
arrows of those for whom he was endeavoring to 



116 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

open the gates of heaven. The first birth from 
CathoHc parents, and therefore the first baptism 
in America, was that of Snorre, who was born in 
1009, of Thorfinn and Gudrida, on the western 
shore of Mt. Hope Bay, in Bristol County, 
Rhode Island. His family returned to Iceland, 
and thence, after the death of her son, Gudrida 
went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and gave the 
then Pope tidings of his people in far-off 
America. A historian, who records the fact, 
writes : ' Rome lent a ready ear to accounts of 
geographical discoveries, and collected facts and 
narratives. Every discovery seemed an extension 
of Papal dominion and a new field for the preach- 
ing of the gospel.' " 

In a recent magazine article, entitled " America 
Discovered and Christianized by the Northmen," 
by R. H. Clarke, the author discusses at length 
this interesting theme, from which we condense 
as follows : 

" The Northmen, wandering fragments of 



COLUMBUS TEE NAVIGATOR. 117 

Asiatic tribes, after traversing Europe, found a 
home and founded a nation in Norway only when 
the sea arrested their progress. Here they 
achieved a permanent conquest and founded the 
mother country, from whose sea-indented shores 
proceeded so many expeditions pregnant with the 
fate of nations. In 860, Naddod, a Norwegian 
pirate, on his voyage to the Faroes, was carried 
far out of his course by a tempest, and this acci- 
dent led to his discovery of Iceland, the ' Ultima 
Thule ' of the ancients. This ice clad island be- 
came a colony of the mother country. About the 
year 900, Rollo made the conquest of Normandy. 
In 1060 we find a Norman prince established in 
Apulia. In 1066 William the Conqueror be- 
comes the master and king of England, and 
founds the present dynasty of Great Britain. It 
will thus be seen that the Northmen were at the 
height of their power and activity when they 
discovered and colonized portions of the western 
continent in the tenth century. The learned 



118 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

geographers and skillful critics, who have re- 
viewed all these circumstances, have decided that 
the first land discovered was Nantucket, one 
degree south of Boston ; the second Nova Scotia ; 
the third Newfoundland. The observations made 
of the country and climate accord with wonderful 
accuracy in locating Yinland the Good, or the 
Northmen, in the region near Newport, Rhode 
Island. This expedition of Leif Ericson was re- 
garded as the most fortunate of all, for he had 
discovered Yinland the Good, had rescued five of 
his countrymen from death at sea, and had intro- 
duced Christianity into Greenland. The ecclesi- 
astics who accompanied the expedition were the 
first Christian priests in that early age that 
visited America. They were also the pastors of 
the church of Greenland, which flourished for 
several centuries. The remains of the temples 
are now visited by adventurous tourists and are 
familiar to the Moravian missionaries of Green- 
land. Leif Ericson was thus the first discoverer 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. Hd 

of our country. There are a number of circum- 
stances strongly tending to show that Columbus 
knew something of these events. His long and 
thorough study of the subject in all its aspects 
must have guided his mind to this information. 
The absolute certainty he professed to have that 
he could discover land in the West could not 
have rested upon theory alone ; it must have 
been based upon information of facts also. He 
himself says that he based his certainty upon the 
authority of learned writers. The visit of Co- 
lumbus to Iceland, brought him into immediate 
contact with the traditions and written accounts 
in relation to the Norse discoveries in the Western 
continent. He is believed to have conversed with 
the bishop and other learned men of Iceland, and 
as his visit there was fifteen years before he dis- 
covered America, and less than two centuries 
after the last Norse expedition to the lands in the 
Western ocean, he must have met Icelanders 
whose grandfathers lived in the time of that ex- 



120 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOE. 

pedition, and perhaps were members of it. It is 
unlikely that Columbus could have been so active 
in his researches for geographical and nautical 
information as all his biographers represent, and 
yet have been in the midst of so much informa- 
tion on these subjects without coming in contact 
with it. Rome was represerfced in the Western 
hemisphere by a succession of seventeen bishops, 
and one of them, Bishop Eric Upsi, became the 
apostle of Yinland in the twelfth century, a fact 
which indicates a permanent settlement of North- 
men in Rhode Island. Columbus never divulged 
to the public the extent of his knowledge of 
facts pointing to lands in the Western ocean. 
At Rome also he must have heard of the Norse 
expeditions to Greenland and Yinland. It is 
also argued that, as Pope Paschal II., in the year 
1121, appointed Eric Upsi bishop of Garda in 
Greenland, and the bishop visited Yinland, as 
part of his spiritual domain, Columbus, in search 
of such knowledge, must have found it where it 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 121 

was most accessible, namely, in the Papal archives. 
There is also some ground for believing", though 
the fact is not established, that a map of Vinland 
was preserved in the Vatican, and that a copy of 
it was furnished to the Pinzons. Facts such as 
these must have formed a considerable part of 
the knowledge acquired by Columbus in his many 
years of study." 

But, as Mr. Justin Winsor points out, in his 
recent life of Columbus, the Norsemen regarded 
Vinland as simply a continuation of Greenland ; 
they had not the faintest conception that it was 
part of a new continent ; and he further urges that 
had Columbus proposed to profit by the Norse dis- 
coveries, or had he supposed Vinland to be Cathay, 
he would scarcely have steered southwest across 
the Atlantic. Some say that he was sent to Ice- 
land by the Holy See. 

^^ It has been sufficiently demonstrated," says 
Mrs. Shipley, " that the heads of the Church in 
Rome knew of the Icelandic discovery of America 



122 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

at the time, the date of the discovery, the year 
1000, having been the exact date of the conver- 
sion of the entire Scandinavian north to Christ- 
ianity, and that the CathoHc Church, the only 
Church then, was quick to profit by this discovery 
and estabhsh its own institutions in the new 
colonies across the ocean. Eome being possessed 
of these facts, Columbus, a devoted son of the 
Church, could not have failed to be acquainted 
with them also." 

The famous French geographer, Malte-Brun, 
states in his " History of Geography " that 
" Columbus, when in Italy, had heard of the Norse 
discoveries beyond Iceland, for Rome was then 
the world's center, and all information of impor- 
tance was sent there." 

It may be asked. Why did not the Church at 
once turn this discovery to account, instead of 
keeping the knowledge secret for so many hundred 
years ? This query has been aptly answered by 
Mr. Addison Child, in an article in the Boston 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 23 

Transcript, wherein he says that "the reason 
that these and probably earlier discoveries were 
not more noticed and utilized was that the need 
of another continent to conquer and colonize had 
not arisen and did not arise until nearly the end 
of the fifteenth century," when Lutheranism and 
the Reformation bade fair to jeopardize the sway 
of Rome in Europe, and made the Papacy look 
with longing eyes toward the virgin continent 
lying beyond the veil of the forgetfulness of 
mankind. 

Religious enthusiasm, as we shall see, had a 
large share in Columbus's gigantic scheme, and it 
is extremely probable, as has been pointed out, 
that his motive and " the motive of all his ecclesi- 
astical patrons, Juan Perez, Deza, the Cardinal 
Mendoza, Luis de St. Angel, and Ferdinand and 
Isabella, was sunply and solely Papal aggrandize- 
ment, the gaining of vast new territory for pro- 
selyting purposes." 

It is even possible that the continent of America 



124 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

was seen four years before Columbus sailed from 
Palos! Says Mr. J. B. Shipley, in a recent pamph- 
let : 

"Jean Cousin, in 1488, sailed from Dieppe, 
then the great commercial and naval port of 
France, and bore out to sea, to avoid the storms 
so prevalent in the Bay of Biscay. Arrived at 
the latitude of the Azores, he was carried west- 
ward by a current and came to an unknown 
country, near the mouth of an immense river. 
He took possession of the continent, but as he 
had not a sufficient crew nor material resources 
adequate for founding a settlement, he re- 
embarked. Instead of returning du^ectly to 
Dieppe he took a southeasterly direction — ^that is, 
toward South Africa — discovered the cape which 
has since retained the name of Cape Agulhas, 
the southern point of Africa, went north by the 
Congo and Guinea, and returned to Dieppe in 
1489. Cousin's heutenant was a Castilian, Pinzon 
by name, who was jealous of his captain, and 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 125 

caused him considerable trouble on the Gold 
Coast. On Cousin's complaint, the Admiralty 
declared him unfit to serve in the marine of 
Dieppe. Pinzon then retired to Genoa, and after- 
ward to Castile. Every circumstance tends 
toward the belief that this is the same Pinzon to 
whom Columbus afterward intrusted the com- 
mand of the Pinta,^^ and who, as we shall see, 
deserted his commander to go off on an in- 
dependent chase after the wealth of the "In- 
dies." 

Not without reason, then, has it been urged 
that the proposed Columbian Exhibition of 1892 
or 1893, can in no sense commemorate the dis- 
covery of America, but only the splendid personal 
achievement of Columbus in so far as he was the 
fitting hero chosen to restore to the world the 
jewel that had been lost or forgotten. It would 
seem that this country, a century hence, in 1985, 
will have a far grander event to commemorate, 
namely, the one thousandth anniversary of the 



126 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

discovery of North America by Leif Ericson ! 
But it should be noted that, even if Columbus 
was f amihar with the misty accounts of the Norse 
voyages to the North, he showed his independence 
thereof by marking out a course due west and 
far to the southward. 

Columbus arrived at Lisbon about the year 
1470, and found the kingdom in full ferment 
over the maritime discoveries of Prince John. 
There he was married to Donna Fehpa Perestrella, 
a daughter of one of Prince Henry's sea-captains, 
the governor of the Island of Porto Santo, and 
who was the mother of his son, Diego. 

On the island above mentioned Columbus 
settled down after his marriage, earning his Hving 
as a map-maker. He was thus directly in the 
marine road to the Guinea Coast, and in constant 
communication with the hardy explorers of the 
coasts of the great southern continent. 

The first inkling we get of his great design is 
through an abortive attempt to get the Senate of 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 127 

Genoa to listen to his scheme. He seems to have 
felt that from Portugal he need expect no aid. 
She was not only embroiled in costly foreign 
wars, but had already marked out for her naviga- 
tors a route and an empire to the eastward which 
she would have been very foolish to abandon. 
But Columbus did not neglect to lay his plans 
before King John. The monarch seems to have 
listened with thoughtful attention, gave a cautious 
promise of support, but first referred the matter 
to a committee, whose report was flatly adverse. 
The king, however, was not quite satisfied at their 
decision, and one of his advisers, the Bishop of 
Ceuta, suggesting that a caravel be stealthily 
equipped and sent out with orders based on the 
scheme submitted by Columbus, the king gave 
his consent, " and this piece of episcopal bad faith 
was actually perpetrated. The caravel, however, 
returned without having accomplished anything, 
the sailors not having had heart to adventure far 
enough westward. It was not an enterprise to be 



128 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

carried out successfully by men who had only 
stolen the idea of it." 

Enraged at this piece of trickery, Columbus 
quitted Portugal with his little son Diego, Donna 
Felipa having died a few years before. This was 
in 1485. Entering Spain he laid his project be- 
fore two grandees, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia 
and the Duke of Medina-Celi. Both seem to have 
been dazzled by the enthusiast's arguments, and 
the latter maintained him for two years in his 
palace, but neither of them was sufficiently power- 
ful to undertake so weighty an undertaking with- 
out royal sanction. So, two years having been 
frittered away, Medina-Celi addressed a letter to 
the Spanish queen, which Columbus carried to 
the court in person. 

And now ensued a weary time of waiting for 
the man whose heart and head were bursting with 
desire to put this great idea to the test. " The 
juncture was singularly inopportune for the con- 
sideration of any peaceful project. The war 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 129 

with the Moors was raging more and more furiously, 
as they were driven back, contesting every inch 
of ground, farther and farther from the heart of 
the kingdom. The Spanish court was at Cordova, 
actively preparing for the campaign which was to 
result in that subjugation of the Crescent to the 
Cross throughout the Peninsula, which was com- 
pleted by the conquest of Granada some six years 
later. Amid the clang of arms and the bustle of 
warlike preparation Columbus was not likely to 
obtain more than a slight and superficial attention 
to a matter which must have seemed remote and 
uncertain. Indeed, when it is considered that the 
most pressing internal affairs of kingdoms are 
neglected by the wisest rulers in times of war, it 
is wonderful that he succeeded in obtaining any 
audience at all. However, he was fortunate 
enough to find at once a friend in the treasurer 
of the household, Alonso de Quintanilla, a man 
who, like himself, ' took delight in great things,' 
and who obtained a hearing for him from the 



130 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

Spanish monarchs. Ferdinand and Isabella did 
not dismiss him abruptly. On the contrary, it is 
said, they listened kindly ; and the conference 
ended by their referring the business to the queen's 
Confessor, Fra Hernando de Talavera, who was 
afterwards Archbishop of Granada. This im- 
portant functionary summoned a junta of cosmog- 
raphers (not a promising assemblage ! ) to consult 
about the affair, and this junta was convened at 
Salamanca, in the summer of the year 1487. Here 
was a step gained; the cosmographers were to 
consider his scheme, and not merely to consider 
whether it was worth taking into consideration. 
But it was impossible for the jury to be unpreju- 
diced. All inventors, to a certain extent, insult 
their contemporaries by accusing them of stupidity 
and of ignorance. And these cosmographical 
pedants, accustomed to beaten tracks, resented 
the insult by which this adventurer was attempting 
to overthrow the belief of centuries. They 
thought that so many persons wise in nautical 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 131 

matters as had preceded the Genoese mariner 
never could have overlooked such an idea as this 
which had presented itself to his mind. Moreover, 
as the learning of the Middle Ages resided for 
the most part in the cloister, the members of 
the junta were principally clerical, and combined 
to crush Columbus with theological objections. 
Texts of Scripture were adduced to refute his 
theory of the spherical shape of the earth, and the 
weighty authority of the Fathers of the Church 
was added to overthrow the ' foolish idea of the 
existence of antipodes ; of people who walk, 
opposite to us, with their heels upward and their 
heads hanging down ; where everything is topsy- 
turvy, where the trees grow with their branches 
downward, and where it rains, hails, and snows 
upward.' King David, St. Paul, St. Augustine, 
Lactantius, and a host of other theological 
authorities were all put in evidence against the 
Genoese mariner ; he was confronted by the ' con- 
servatism of lawyers united to the bigotry of 



132 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

priests.' Las Casas displays his usual acuteness 
when he says that the great difficulty of Columbus 
was, not that of teaching, but that of unteaching ; 
not of promulgating his own theory, but of eradi- 
cating the erroneous convictions of the judges 
before whom he had to plead his cause. In fine, 
the junta decided that the project was ' vain and 
Impossible, and that it did not belong to the 
majesty of such great princes to determine any- 
thing upon such weak grounds of information.' 
Ferdinand and Isabella seem not to have taken 
the extremely unfavorable view of the matter 
entertained by the junta of cosmographers, or at 
least to have been wilhng to dismiss Columbus 
gently, for they merely said that, mth the wars 
at present on their hands, and especially that of 
Granada, they could not undertake any new ex- 
penses, but when that war was ended, they would 
examine his plan more carefully. 

" Thus terminated a solicitation at the court of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, which, according to some 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 133 

authorities, lasted five years ; for the facts above 
mentioned, though short in narration, occupied 
no little time in transaction. During the whole 
of this period, Columbus appears to have followed 
the sovereigns in the movements which the war 
necessitated, and to have been treated by them 
with much consideration. Sums were from time 
to time granted from the royal treasury for his 
private expenses, and he was billeted as a public 
functionary in the various towns of Andalusia 
where the court rested. But his must have been 
a very up-hill task. Las Casas, who, from an 
experience larger even than that which fell to the 
lot of Columbus, knew what it was to endure the 
cold and indolent neglect of superficial men in 
small authority, and all the vast delay, which 
cannot be comprehended except by those who 
have suffered under it, that belongs to the trans- 
action of any affair in which many persons have 
to co-operate, compares the suit of Columbus 
to a battle, ' a terrible, continuous, painful, prolix 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 80 

battle.' The tide of this long war (for war it 
waSj rather than a battle) having turned against 
him, Columbus left the court, and went to Seville 
' with much sadness and discomfiture.' During 
this dreary period of a suitor's life — which, how- 
ever, has been endured by some of the greatest 
men the world has seen, which was well known 
by close observation, or bitter experience, to 
Spenser, Camoens, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bacon 
— one joy at least was not untastedby Columbus, 
namely, that of love. His beloved Beatrice, 
whom he first met at Cordova, must have believed 
in him, even if no one else had done so ; but love 
was not sufficient to retain at her side a man 
goaded by a great idea, or perhaps that love did 
but impel him to still greater efforts for her sake, 
as is the way with lovers of the nobler sort. 

" Other friends, too, shared his enthusiasm, and 
urged him onward. Juan Perez de la Marchena, 
guardian of the monastery of La Rabida, in An- 
dalusia, had been the confessor of Queen Isabella, 



1 36 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

but had exchanged the bustle of the court for 
the learned leisure of the cloister. The little town 
of Palos, with its seafaring population and mari- 
time interests, was near the monastery, and the 
principal men of the place were glad to pass the 
long winter evenings in the society of Juan Perez, 
discussing questions of cosmography and astron- 
omy. Among these visitors were Martin Alonzo 
Pinzon, the chief ship-owner of Palos, and Garcia 
Hernandez, the village doctor ; and one can fancy 
how the schemes of Columbus must have appeared 
to the httle conclave as a ray of sunlight in the 
dulness of their simple life. Hernandez, espe- 
cially, who seems to have been somewhat skilled in 
physical science, and therefore capable of appre- 
ciating the arguments of Columbus, became a 
warm believer in his project. It is worthy of 
notice that a person who appears only once, as it 
were, in a sentence in history, should have ex- 
ercised so much influence upon it as Garcia Her- 
nandez, who was probably a man of far superior 

9 



COB UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 137 

attainments to those around him, and was in the 
habit of deploring, as such men do, his hard lot 
in being placed where he could be so little under- 
stood. Now, however, he was to do more at one 
stroke than many a man who has been all his days 
before the world. Columbus had abandoned his 
suit at court in disgust, and had arrived at the 
monastery before quitting Spain to fetch his son 
Diego, whom he had left with Juan Perez to be 
educated. All his griefs and struggles he con- 
fided to Perez, who could not bear to hear of 
his intention to leave the country for France or 
England, and to make a foreign nation greater 
by allowing it to adopt his project. The three 
friends — the monk, the learned physician, and 
the skilled cosmographer — discussed together the 
proposition so unhappily familiar to the last- 
named member of their council. The afPection 
of Juan Perez and the learning of Hernandez 
were not slow to follow in the track which the 
enthusiasm of the great adventurer made out 



138 COL UMB US THE JSfA VIGA TOE . 

before them ; and they becamej no doubt, as 
convinced as Columbus himseK of the feasibility 
of his undertaking. The difficulty, however, 
was not in becoming believers themselves, but in 
persuading- those to believe who would have power 
to further the enterprise. Their discussions upon 
this point ended in the conclusion that Juan 
Perez, who was known to the queen, having 
acted as her confessor, should write to her high- 
ness. He did so ; and the result was favorable. 
The queen sent for him, heard what he had to 
say, and in consequence remitted money to Co- 
lumbus to enable him to come to court and renew 
his suit. He attended the court again ; his nego- 
tiations were resumed, but were again broken off 
on the ground of the largeness of the conditions 
which he asked for. His opponents said that 
these conditions were too large if he succeeded, 
and if he should not succeed and the conditions 
should come to nothing, they thought that there 
was an air of trifling in granting such conditions 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 139 

at all. And, indeed, they were very large ; 
namely, that he was to be made an admiral at 
once to be appointed viceroy of the countries he 
should discover, and to have an eighth of the 
profits of the expedition. The only probable 
way of accounting for the extent of these de- 
mands and his perseverance in making them, 
even to the risk of total failure, is that the dis- 
covering of the Indies was but a step in his mind 
to greater undertakings, as they seemed to him, 
which he had in view, of going to Jerusalem with 
an army and making another crusade. For Co- 
lumbus carried the chivalrous ideas of the twelfth 
century into the somewhat self-seeking fifteenth. 
The negotiation, however, failed a second time, 
and Columbus resolved again to go to France, 
when Alonzo de Quintanilla and Juan Perez 
contrived to obtain a hearing for the great ad- 
venturer from Cardinal Mendoza, who was pleased 
with him. Columbus then offered, in order to 
meet the objections of his opponents, to pay an 



140 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

eighth part of the expense of the expedition. Still 
nothing was done. And now, finally, Columbus 
determined to go to France, and indeed had actu- 
ally set off one day in January of the year 1492, 
when Luis de Santangel, receiver of the ecclesi- 
astical revenues of the crown of Aragon, a person 
much devoted to the plans of Columbus, ad- 
dressed the queen Avith all the energy that a man 
throws into his words when he is aware that it is 
his last time for speaking in favor of a thing 
which he has much at heart. He told her that 
he wondered that, as she always had a lofty mind 
for great things, it should be wanting to her on 
this occasion. He endeavored to pique her jeal- 
ousy as a monarch by suggesting that the enter- 
prise might fall into the hands of other princes. 
Then he said something in behalf of Columbus 
himself, and the queen was not unlikely to know 
well the bearing of a great man. He intimated 
to her highness that what was an impossibility to 
the cosmographers, might not be so in nature. 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. -41 

NoPj continued he, should any endeavor in so 
great a matter be attributed to lightness, even 
though the endeavor should fail ; for it is the 
part of great and generous princes to ascertain 
the secrets of the world. Other princes had 
gained eternal fame this way. He concluded by 
saying that all the aid Columbus wanted to set 
the expedition afloat, was but a million of mar- 
avedis (equivalent to about £308, English money 
of the period) ; and that so great an enterprise 
ought not to be abandoned for the sake of such 
a trifling sum. These well-addressed arguments, 
falling in, as they did, with those of Qumtanilla, 
the treasurer, who had great influence with the 
queen, prevailed. She thanked these lords for 
their counsel, and said she would adopt it, but 
they must wait until the finances had recovered a 
little from the drain upon them occasioned by the 
conquest of Granada, or if they thought that the 
plan must be forthwith carried out, she would 
pledge her jewels to raise the necessary funds. 




Columbus Becalled by order of Isabella. 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. l-iH 

San tang el and Qiiintanilla kissed her hands, 
highly delighted at succeeding; and Santangel 
offered to advance the money required. . Upon 
this the queen sent an alguazil to overtake Co- 
lumbus and bring him back to the court. He 
was overtaken at the bridge of Pinos, two leagues 
from Granada ; returned to Santa Fe, where the 
sovereigns were encamped before Granada ; was 
well received by Isabella ; and finally the agree- 
ment between him and their CathoHc highnesses 
was settled with the secretary, Coloma." 

These articles of agreement were as follows : 



1. That Columbus should have, for himself, during his life, and 
his heirs and successors forever, the office of admiral in all the lands 
and continents which he might discover or acquire in the ocean, 
with similar honors and prerogatives to those enjoyed by the high 
admiral of Castile in his district. 

2. That he should be viceroy and governor-general over all the 
said lands and continents ; with the privilege of nominating three 
candidates for the government of each island or province, one of 
M^hom should be selected by the sovereigns. 

3. That he should be entitled to reserve for himself one tenth 
of all pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and all other 
articles and merchandises, in whatever manner found, bought, 



144 COL UMB US THE NA VIGATOR. 

bartered, or gained within his admiralty, the costs being first de- 
ducted. 

4. That he, or his lieutenant, should be the sole judge in all 
causes and disputes arising out of traffic between those countries 
and Spain, provided the high admiral of Castile had similar juris- 
diction in his district. 

5. That he might then, and at all after times, contribute an 
eighth part of the expense in fitting out vessels to sail on this en- 
terprise, and receive an eighth part of the profits. 



On the 17th of April, 1492, the papers were all 
signed and Columbus was free to begin the prep- 
arations for his momentous voyage. The port 
of Palos in Andalusia was designated as the place 
of departure, the municipality standing com- 
mitted, on account of some offence, to furnish two 
armed caravels to the monarch for the space of 
twelve months. At the same time " a proclama- 
tion of immunity from civil and criminal process 
to persons taking service in the expedition was 
issued. The ships of Columbus were therefore a 
refuge for criminals and fraudulent debtors," — not 
the choicest kind of material for an enterprise of 
pith and moment. Even with these inducements 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 145 

it was not easy to induce men to embark. The 
hardy mariners of Palos refused to enlist for what 
they deemed a crazy voyage under a mad en- 
thusiast. But Juan Perez was active in persuad- 
ing men to embark. The Pinzons, rich men and 
skilful mariners of Palos, joined in the undertak- 
ing personally, and aided it with their money, 
and by these united exertions three vessels were 
manned with ninety mariners, and provisioned for 
a year. 

" The vessels were all of small size, probably 
of not more than one hundred tons' burden 
each, and therefore not larger in carrying capa- 
city than the American yachts whose ocean race 
from New York to Cowes was regarded as an ex- 
ample of immense hardihood, even in the year 
1867. But Columbus considered them very 
suitable for the undertaking. The Santa Maria 
which Columbus himself commanded, was the 
only one of the three that was decked through- 
out. The of&cial persons and the crew on board 



14b COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

her were sixteen in number. The two other ves- 
sels were of the class called caravels, and were 
decked fore and aft, but not amidships, the stem 
and stern being built so as to rise high out of the 
water. One of them, the Pinta, was manned 
by a crew of thirty, commanded by Martin Alonzo 
Pinzon. The other, the Nina, had Vincent 
Yanez Pinzon for captain, and a crew of twenty- 
four men. The whole number of adventurers 
amounted to a hundred and twenty persons, men 
of various nationalities, including among them 
two natives of the British Isles." 

At this juncture it may not be out of place to 
glance at the controlling motives of the illustrious 
man who planned and controlled the expedition. 
More than two hundred years had passed since 
the disastrous end of the eighth and last of those 
gigantic pulsations of religious faith and fanaticism 
known as the Crusades. Yet the great dream of 
Columbus was nothing less then the revival of the 
Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Land from 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 i'T' 

the rule of the Moslem. Another of his principal 
objects, says Irving, "was undoubtedly the propa- 
gation of the Christian faith." He expected to 
arrive at the extremity of Asia, and to open a direct 
and easy communication with the vast and mag- 
nificent empire of the Grand Khan. The conver- 
sion of that heathen potentate had, in former times, 
been a favorite aim of various "^oJitifPs and pious 
sovereigns, and various missions had been sent 
to the remote regions of the East for that purpose. 
Columbus now considered himself about to effect 
this great work ; to spread the light- of revelation 
to the very ends of the earth, and thus to be the 
instrument of accomplishing one of the sublime 
predictions of Holy Writ. Ferdinand listened 
with complacency to these enthusiastic anticipa- 
tions. With him, however, religion was subservient 
to interest ; and he had found, in the recent con- 
quest of Granada, that extending the sway of the 
Church might be made a laudable means of ex- 
tending his own dominions. According to the 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 149 

doctrines of the day, every nation that refused to 
acknowledge the truths of Christianity was fair 
spoil for a Christian invader ; and it is probable 
that Ferdinand was more stimulated by the ac- 
counts given of the wealth of Cipango, Cathay, 
and other provinces belonging to the Grand Khan, 
than by any anxiety for the conversion of him 
and his semi-barbarous subjects. Isabella had 
nobler inducements ; she was filled with a pious 
zeal at the idea of effecting such a great work of 
salvation. From different motives, therefore, both 
of the sovereigns accorded with the views of 
Columbus in this particular, and when he after- 
wards departed on his voyage, letters were actually 
given him for the Grand Khan of Tartary. The 
ardent enthusiasm of Columbus did not stop here. 
Anticipating boundless wealth from his discover- 
ies, he suggested that the treasures thus acquired 
should be consecrated to the pious purpose of 
rescuing the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem from the 
power of the infidels. The sovereigns smiled at 



150 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

this sally of the imagination, but expressed them- 
selves well pleased with it, and assured him that 
even without the funds he anticipated, they should 
be well disposed to that holy undertaking. What 
the king and queen, however, may have con- 
sidered a mere sally of momentary excitement, was 
a deep and cherished design of Columbus. It is 
a curious and characteristic fact, which has never 
been particularly noticed, that the recovery of 
the holy sepulchre was one of the great objects 
of his ambition, meditated throughout the re- 
mainder of his life, and solemnly provided for in 
his will. In fact, he subsequently considered it 
the main work for which he was chosen by Heaven 
as an agent, and that his great discovery was but 
a preparatory dispensation of Providence to fur- 
nish means for its accomplishment. 

" A home-felt mark of favor, characteristic of 
the kind and considerate heart of Isabella, was 
accorded to Columbus before his departure from 
the court. An albala^ or letter-patent, was issued 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 151 

by the queen on the 8th of May, appointing his 
son Diego page to Prince Juan, the heir apparent, 
with an allowance for his support; an honor 
granted only to the sons of persons of distinguished 
rank. Thus gratified in his dearest wishes, after a 
course of delays and disappointments sufficient to 
have reduced any ordinary man to despair, Colum- 
bus took leave of the court on the 12th of May, 
and set out joyfully for Palos. Let those who are 
disposed to faint under difficulties in the prosecu- 
tion of any great and worthy undertaking re- 
member that eighteen years elapsed after the 
time that Columbus conceived his enterprise be- 
fore he was enabled to carry it into effect ; that 
the greater part of that time was passed in almost 
hopeless solicitation, amidst poverty, neglect, and 
taunting ridicule; that the prime of his life had 
wasted away in the struggle, and that when his 
perseverance was finally crowned with success, he 
was in his fifty-sixth year. His example should 
encourage the enterprising never to despair." 



1 52 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

"The signing of the contract with Columbus 
by Ferdinand and Isabella, was a momentous act/' 
says A. W. Wright. " It marked the certain 
beginning of an enterprise which had a profound 
effect upon the weKare of the human race. Ad- 
vancing civihzation had been rapidly paving the 
way for it. There are ages of special mental ac- 
tivity in which mankind seems to progress much 
more swiftly than in others. Columbus lived, not 
only during the revival of classical and other 
learning, but stood upon the threshold of the 
greatest advance of physical knowledge within a 
given time the world has ever known — our own 
time, perhaps, excepted. . . . The trade to the East 
by the Mediterranean was mainly in the hands of 
the Itahans, and in the general development of 
nautical enterprise Castile and Portugal were 
forced to turn their eyes to the Atlantic. These 
two nationalities, after a series of quarrels as to 
new possessions, made a treaty of division, Portu- 
gal securing Madeira, the Azores, and the African 



COL VMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 53 

coast. Castile took the Canaries and what she 
might find elsewhere. This apparently losing 
bargain for the latter confined her to a direction 
which led to America and the enormous results 
which followed. At this time, too, what soon 
became the great empire of Charles Y . and Philip 
II. was founded by the union of Aragon and 
Castile in the persons of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
Under these monarchs Spain became a united na- 
tion, and the career of the Moors in the peninsula, 
which had lasted for eight centuries, was termi- 
nated." 

The written terms which Columbus insisted 
upon, and to which the sovereigns after holding 
out some time placed their names, according to 
Prescott, " constituted Christopher Columbus their 
Admiral Viceroy, and Governor-General of all 
such islands and continents as he should discover 
in the Western Ocean, with the privilege of 
nominating three candidates for the selection of 
one by the crown for the government of each of 



154 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

these territories. He was to be vested with ex- 
clusive right of jurisdiction over all commercial 
transactions within his admiralty. He was to be 
entitled to one-tenth of all the products and 
profits within the limits of his discoveries, and an 
additional eighth provided he should contribute 
one-eighth part of the expense." He was also to 
receive the title of Don, which then meant much 
more than it does now, for himself and his heirs 
forever. The share of the expense to be defrayed 
by Columbus was met through a loan from his 
friends the Pinzons. The amount ventured by 
the crown in the undertaking was only seventeen 
thousand florins. 

Some writers have commented ^^upon the hesita- 
tion of Ferdinand and Isabella in investing so 
small a sum in so profitable an enterprise as 
discovering America ; but, considering the circum- 
stances, it was a very bold and advanced thing to 
do, and Isabella at least was decidedly ahead of 

the times in her day and generation. No other 

10 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 155 

monarch in Europe could be induced to take the 
step so uncertain of results, and she had to over- 
come the opposition of her husband. Next to 
Columbus himself should Isabella be honored in 
whatever ceremonies may be observed in the 
coming commemoration of the discovery of the 
New World. She remained his fast friend, and 
he wrote of her on his third voyage, ' In the 
midst of the general incredulity the Almighty 
infused into the Queen, my lady, the spirit of 
intelligence and energy, and whilst every one else 
in his ignorance was expatiating on the incon- 
venience and cost, her Highness approved it, on 
the contrary, and gave it all the support in her 
power.' " 




Father Juan and Garcia Hernandez watching the Departure of 
Columbus. 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOM. 



IV. 



ACROSS THE WESTERN OCEAN. 

" Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer ! 
List, ye landsmen all to me ; 
Messmates, hear a brother sailor 
Sing the dangers of the sea !" 

On the third of August, 1492, after all the 
ships' companies had confessed and received the 
sacrament J the little fleet set sail from the harbor 
of Palos, and steered straight for the Canary 
Islands, the nearest land. Columbus's design was 
evidently to postpone as long as possible the 
actual plunge into the unknown, out of regard to 
the feelings of his motley crew. It is worthy of 
note that the most momentous sea-voyage ever 
undertaken was begun on a Friday, although down 
to our own time seamen have continued to regard 
that day as one of ill-omen. But in this case, at 



158 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

least; Friday was not inauspicious, although the 
relatives of those on board the ships bade them 
farewell as men doomed to certain death. 

At the outset Columbus commenced a regular 
journal for the inspection of his royal patrons on 
his return — for the sublime faith of the man never 
doubted but that he would return again to sunny 
Spain. This diary began with a dignified preface 
as follows : 

"In nomine D. N. Jesu Christi. Whereas 
most Christian, most high, most excellent, and 
most powerful princes, king and queen of the 
Spains, and of the islands of the sea, our sover- 
eigns, in the present year of 1492, after your 
highnesses had put an end to the war with the 
Moors who ruled in Europe, and had concluded 
that warfare in the great city of Granada, where, 
on the second of January, of this present year, I 
saw the royal banners of your highnesses placed 
by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra, 
which is the fortress of that city, and beheld the 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 159 

Moorish king sally forth from the gates of the 
citj, and kiss the royal hands of your highnesses 
and of my lord the prince ; and immediately in 
that same month, in consequence of the informa- 
tion which I had given to your highnesses of the 
lands of India, and of a prince who is called the 
Grand Khan, which is to say in our language, 
king of kings ; how that many times he and his 
predecessors had sent to Rome to entreat for 
doctors of our holy faith to instruct him in the 
same ; and that the Holy Father had never pro- 
vided him with them, and thus so many people 
were lost, believing in idolatries, and imbibing 
doctrines of perdition ; therefore your highnesses, 
as Catholic Christians and princes, lovers and pro- 
moters of the holy Christian faith, and enemies 
of the sect of Mahomet, and of all idolatries and 
heresies, determined to send me, Christopher Co- 
lumbus, to the said parts of India, to see the 
said princes, and the people and lands, and discover 
the nature and disposition of them all, and the 



160 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

means to be taken for the conversion of them to 
our holy faith ; and ordered that 1 should not go 
by land to the east, by which it is the custom to 
go, but by a voyage to the west, by which course, 
unto the present time, we do not know for certain 
that any one hath passed. Your highnesses, 
therefore, after having expelled all the Jews from 
your kingdoms and territories, commanded me, 
in the same month of January, to proceed with a 
sufficient armament to the said parts of India ; and 
for this purpose bestowed great favors upon me, 
ennobling me, that thenceforward I might style 
myself Don, appointing me high admiral of the 
Ocean sea, and perpetual viceroy and governor of 
all the islands and continents I should discover 
and gain, and which henceforward may be dis- 
covered and gained, in the Ocean sea ; and that 
my eldest son should succeed me, and so on from 
generation to generation forever. I departed, 
therefore, from the city of Granada, on Saturday, 
the 12th of May, of the same year 1492, to Palos, 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 161 

a seaport, where I armed three ships well calcu- 
lated for such service, and sailed from that port 
well furnished with provisions and with many 
seamen, on Friday, the 3d of August, of the same 
year, half an hour before sunrise, and took the 
route for the Canary Islands of your highnesses, 
to steer my course thence, and navigate until I 
should arrive at the Indies, and deliver the em- 
bassy of your highnesses to those princes, and 
accomplish that which you had commanded. For 
this purpose I intend to write during this voyage, 
very punctually from day to day, all that I may 
do, and see, and experience, as will hereafter be 
seen. Also, my sovereign princes^ beside describ- 
ing each night all that has occurred in the day, 
and in the day the navigation of the night, I pro- 
pose to make a chart, in which I will set down 
the waters and lands of the Ocean sea in their 
proper situations under their bearings ; and fur- 
ther, to compose a book, and illustrate the whole 
in picture by latitude from the equinoctial, and 



162 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

longitude from the west ; and upon the whole it 
will be essential that I should forget sleep and 
attend closely to the navigation to accomplish 
these things, which will be a great labor." * 

A current writer has called attention to the 
curious fact, already noted, that "it was on a 
Friday, the 3d of August, 1492, that Columbus 
left the little island of Saltes on his memorable 
first voyage, and continues to comment that it was 
also on a Friday, the 12th of October, that he 
landed in the New World ; that on a Friday he 
set sail homeward ; that on a Friday again, the 
15th of February, 1493, land was sighted on 
his return to Europe ; finally, that on a Friday, 
the 15th of March, he arrived in Palos. What 
strikes one in perusing the story of the great voy- 
age is how nature aided him in his task. The 
weather was delightful, and again and again his 



* living's translation. Two things may be noted in his preface : 
the religious object of the expedition and the statement that it 
was not certainly known that anyone had previously crossed the 
Atlantic from Europe to America. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 163 

journal says " there could not be a more favor- 
able wind." In the flight of birds, the patches 
of grass borne on the waves, and other signs of 
land seemingly not far distant, constant aids 
were furnished to him in keeping up the courage 
of his men. But on the return voyage nature 
squared the account with a winter of almost un- 
precedented fury, in which his escape from ship- 
wreck was such that he accounted it miraculous. 
It is a curious speculation. When would the world 
have heard of what Columbus discovered, had his 
ships gone down in that fearful return voyage, 
and ha.d his colony in the West Indies been left 
to take care of itself? " 

The Canaries were reached after a few days' 
sail with no incident worth recording except the 
breaking of the Pinto's rudder. This was sup- 
posed to have been done by design, in hope 
of forcing the admiral to return to Spain. But 
such a trifle could not balk a man who had tri- 
umphed over the hinderances and discouragements 



164 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

of near twenty years of waiting. The Pinta was 
repaired, and the cut of the Nina^s sails altered 
for the better, and on the sixth of September the 
fleet set sail from Gomera, their prows pointing 
due west. 

Looking backward, we are lost in admiration at 
the fortitude which could thus plunge boldly into 
a trackless and chartless sea. For it must be re- 
membered that Columbus had nothing but hear- 
say, or tradition, or mere conjecture to support 
his beliefs. Charts he had none save a rude one 
prepared by himself, which exhibited the contour 
of the land toward Avhich he was sailing, as he 
supposed it to lie. Though this chart no longer 
exists, it is known to have been based on the 
globe constructed by Martin Behaim in the year 
1492, and which is still in existence. Its crude 
guesses are enough to make one laugh. The 
European and African coasts are pretty accu- 
rately laid down from Iceland to the Guinea 
Coast. Opposite to these, on the westward side of 



COL UMB US THE JSfA VIGA TOR . 105 

the Atlantic, is situated the coast of Asia, or 
India, as it was termed. Midway between the 
two continents is placed the great island of 
Cipango, corresponding to Japan, and which 
Marco Polo said was fifteen hundred leagues dis- 
tant from the Asiatic mainland. 

Curiously enough this misplaced Cipango cor- 
responds in situation to the fabled Atlantis. 
But in the calculations of Columbus he advanced 
this island — Japan — about three thousand miles 
too far to the east, and this was the first land he 
expected to reach. 

For three days after leaving Gomera a great 
calm kept the three ships tossing on the Atlantic 
swells, with flapping sails, in full sight of the 
Canary Islands. At length, on the evening of 
Sunday, the ninth of September, a favoring 
breeze sprang up, and soon there was nothing to 
be seen but the boundless circle of sea and sky. 

" On losing sight of this last trace of land, the 
hearts of the crews failed them. They seemed 



166 COL UMB US THE ]SfA VIGA TOR. 

literally to have taken leave of the world. Behind 
them was everything dear to the heart of man ; 
country, family, friends, life itself ; before them 
everything was chaos, mystery, and peril. In 
the perturbation of the moment, they despaired 
of ever more seeing their homes. Many of the 
rugged seamen shed tears, and some broke into 
loud lamentations. The admiral tried in every 
way to soothe their distress, and to inspire them 
with his own glorious anticipations. He described 
to them the maofnificent countries to which he 
was about to conduct them ; the islands of the 
Indian seas teeming with gold and precious 
stones ; the regions of Cipango and Cathay, with 
their cities of unrivalled wealth and splendor. 
He promised them land and riches, and every- 
thing that could arouse their cupidity or inflame 
their imaginations ; nor were these promises made 
for purposes of mere deception ; he certainly be- 
lieved that he should reahze them all. 

" He issued orders to the commanders of the 



COL UMB US THE MA VIGA TOB. 167 

other vessels that, in the event of separation by 
any accident, they should continue directly west- 
ward ; but that after saihng seven hundred leagues 
they should lay by from midnight until daylight, 
as at about that distance he confidently ex- 
pected to find land. In the meantime, as he 
thought it possible he might not discover land 
within the distance thus assigned, and as he fore- 
saw that the vague terrors already awakened among 
the seamen would increase with the space which 
intervened between them and their homes, he 
commenced a stratagem"^ which he continued 
throughout the voyage. He kept two reckon- 
ings ; one correct, in which the true way of the 
ship was notedj and which was retained in secret 
for his own government ; in the other, which was 
open to general inspection, a number of leagues 
was daily subtracted from the sailing of the ship, 
so that the crews were kept in ignorance of the 
real distance they had advanced. 

*An old device with Columbus ; see Chapter II. 



168 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

^^ On the 11th of September, when about one 
hundred and fifty leagues west of Ferro, they fell 
in with part of a mast, which from its size ap- 
peared to have belonged to a vessel of about a 
hundred and twenty tons' burden, and which had 
evidently been a long time in the water. The 
crews, tremblingly alive to everything that could 
excite their hopes or fears, looked with rueful eye 
upon this wreck of some unfortunate voyager, 
drifting ominously at the entrance of those un- 
known seas. On the 13th of September, in the 
evening, being about two hundred leagues from 
the island of Ferro, Columbus, for the first time, 
noticed the variation of the needle, — a phe- 
nomenon which had never before been remarked. 
He perceived, about nightfall, that the needle, 
instead of pointing to the north star, varied about 
half a point, or between five and six degrees, to 
the northwest, and still more on the following 
morning. Struck with this circumstance, he ob- 
served it attentively for three days, and found 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 169 

that the variation increased as he advan^ied. He 
at first made no mention of this phenomenon, 
knowing how ready his people were to take alarm, 
but it soon attracted the attention of the pilots, 
and filled them with consternation. It seemed as 
if the very laws of nature were changing as they 
advanced, and that they were entering another 
world, subject to unknown influences. They ap- 
prehended that the compass was about to lose its 
mysterious virtues, and, without this guide, what 
was to become of them in a vast and trackless 
ocean ? 

" Columbus tasked his science and ingenuity 
for reasons with which to allay their terror. He 
observed that the direction of the needle was not 
to the polar star, but to some fixed and invisible 
point. The variation, therefore, he said, was not 
caused by any fallacy in the compass, but by the 
movement of the north star itself, which, like the 
other heavenly bodies, had its changes and revolu- 
tions, and every day described a circle round the 



170 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

pole. The high opinion which the pilots enter- 
tained of Columbus as a profound astronomer 
gave weight to this theory, and their alarm sub- 
sided. As yet the solar system of Copernicus was 
unknown : the explanation, therefore, was highly 
plausible and ingenious, and it shows the vivacity 
of his mind, ever ready to meet the emergency of 
the moment. The theory may at first have been 
advanced merely to satisfy the minds of others, 
but Columbus appears subsequently to have re- 
mained satisfied with it himself. The phenomenon 
has now become familiar to us, but we still con- 
tinue ignorant of its cause. It is one of those 
mysteries of nature, open to daily observation and 
experiment, and apparently simple from their 
famiharity, but which on investigation make the 
human mind conscious of its limits ; baffling the 
experience of the practical, and humbling the 
pride of science." 

Throughout the voyage Columbus's diary an- 
swered pretty much to the log-book which a modern 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 171 

sea-captain keeps. All the petty incidents of a 
sea-voyage which even nowadays lend interest to 
each day are recorded, as the following extracts 
show : 

" On the 14th, the sailors of the caravel Nina 
saw two tropical birds, which they said were never 
wont to be seen at more than fifteen or twenty 
leagues from shore. On the 15th they all saw a 
meteor fall from heaven, which made them very 
sad. On the 16th, they first came upon those 
immense plains of seaweed (the fuciis natans), 
which constitute the Sargasso Sea, and which 
occupy a space in the Atlantic almost equal to 
seven times the extent of France. The aspect, of 
these plains greatly terrified the sailors, who 
thought they might be coming upon submerged 
lands and rocks ; but finding that the vessels cut 
their way through this sea-weed, the sailors there- 
upon took heart. ... In the morning of the 
same day they catch a crab, from which Columbus 
infers that they cannot be more than eighty 



172 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOE. 

leagues distant from land. The ISth, they see 
many birds, and a cloud in the distance ; and that 
night they expect to see land. On the 19th, in 
the morning, comes a pelican (a bird not usually 
seen twenty leagues from the coast) ; in the 
evening, another ; also drizzling rain without 
wind, a certain sign, as the diary says, of proximity 
to land. 

" The admiral, however, will not beat about for 
land, as he concludes that the land which these 
various natural phenomena give token of, can only 
be islands, as indeed it proved to be. He will see 
them on his return ; but now he must press on 
to the Indies. This determination shows his 
strength of mind, and indicates the almost certain 
basis on which his great resolve reposed. Accord- 
ingly, he was not to be diverted from the main 
design by any partial success, though by this time 
he knew well the fears of his men, some of whom 
had already come to the conclusion, ' that it would 
be their best plan to throw him quietly into the 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 173 

sea, and say he unfortunately fell in, while he 
stood absorbed in looking at the stars.' Indeed, 
three days after he had resolved to pass on to the 
Indies, we find him saying, for Las Casas gives his 
words, ' Yery needful for me was this contrary 
wind, for the people were very much tormented 
with the idea that there were no winds on these 
seas that could take them back to Spain.' 

" On they go, having signs occasionally in the 
presence of birds and grass and fish that land must 
be near ; but land does not come. Once, too, they 
are all convinced that they see land; they 
sing the ' Gloria in Excelsis ; ' and even the admiral 
goes out of his course towards this land, which 
turns out to be no land. They are like men 
listening to a dreadful discourse or oration, that 
seems to have many endings which end not ; so 
that the hearer listens at last in grim despair, 
thinking that all things have lost their meaning, 
and that ending is but another form of begin- 
ning. 



174 COLTJMBVSTHEI^AVIGATOB. 

" These mariners were stout-hearted, too ; but 
what a daring thing it was to plunge, down-hill 
as it were, into 

' A world of waves, a sea without a shore, 
Trackless, and vast, and wild,' 

mocked day by day with signs of land that neared 
not. And these men had left at home all that 
is dearest to man, and did not bring out any 
great idea to uphold them, and had already done 
enough to make them important men in their 
towns, and to furnish ample talk for the evenings 
of their lives. Still we find Columbus, as late as 
the 3d of October, saying, ' that he did not choose 
to stop beating about last week during those days 
that they had such signs of land, although he had 
knowledge of there being certain islands in that 
neighborhood, because he would not suffer any 
detention, since his object was to go to the Indies; 
and if he should stop on the way it would show a 
want of mind.' 

"Meanwhile, he had a hard task to keep his 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 175 

men in any order. Peter Martyr, who knew 
Columbus well, and had probably been favored 
with a special account from him of these perilous 
days, describes his way of dealing with the re- 
fractory mariners, and how he contrived to win 
them onwards from day to day ; now soothing 
them with soft words, now carrying their minds 
from thought of the present danger by spreading 
out large hopes before them, not forgetting to let 
them know what their princes would say to them 
if they attempted aught against him, or would not 
obey his orders. With this untutored crowd of 
wild, frightened men around him, with mocking 
hopes, not knowing what each day would bring to 
him, on went Columbus." 

He had already, as we have seen, adopted the 
device of keeping a double-reckoning of the miles 
sailed — one, for the men, wherein their progress 
was made to appear slower than was really the 
case, and a correct reckoning for himself. It 
must be remembered that the admiral was not sure 



1 76 COL UMB US THE I^A VIGA TOR. 

of his distances, although he beheved that his 
conjectures would prove to be truths ; and in the 
second place, he did not wish to arouse the fears 
of the crews by letting them know how many 
watery leagues intervened between them and home. 
On the first of October the crew of the Santa 
Maria were told they had sailed five hundred and 
eighty-foiir leagues to the westward, but the pri- 
vate reckoning of Columbus showed seven hun- 
dred and seven. 

Thus far Columbus had steered due west. 
Time and again the welcome cry of " Land ho ! " 
had rung out from the different vessels, but in 
each instance it was proved to be a delusive cloud 
which melted into thin air. When they had 
sailed seven hundred and fifty leagues, the dis- 
tance at which the admiral had expected to sight 
Cipango, even his stout heart began to have its 
misgivings. Great flocks of small birds were 
observed flying to the southwest, and remember- 
ing the great store which the Portuguese in their 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 177 

various voyages had set by such indications^ he 
conckided that there must be land in that quarter 
where the feathered creatures could find rest and 
food. 

He therefore, on the night of the seventh of 
October, changed the course to west-south-west. 
And now the end of the voyage was near. " For 
three days they stood in this direction, and the 
further they went the more frequent and encourag- 
ing were the signs of land. Flights of small 
birds of various colors, some of them such as sing 
in the fields, came flying about the ships, and 
then continued towards the southwest, and others 
were heard also flying by in the night. Tunny 
fish played about the smooth sea, and a heron, a 
pelican, and a duck, were seen, all bound in the 
same direction. The herbage which floated by 
was fresh and green, as if recently from land, and 
the air, Columbus observes, was sweet and fragrant 
as April breezes in Seville. 

" All these signs, however, were regarded by 




The Ships of Columbus's First Voyage. 



COL UMB US THE I^A VIGA TOR. 179 

the crews as so many delusions beguiling them on 
to destruction ; and when on the evening of the 
third day they beheld the sun go down upon a 
shoreless ocean, they broke forth into turbulent 
clamor. They exclaimed against this obstinacy 
in tempting fate by continuing on into a bound- 
less sea. They insisted upon turning homeward, 
and abandoning the voyage as hopeless. Col- 
umbus endeavored to pacify them by gentle words 
and promises of large rewards ; but finding that 
they only increased in clamor he assumed a 
decided tone. He told them it was useless to 
murmur ; the expedition had been sent by the 
sovereigns to seek the Indies, and, happen what 
might, he was determined to persevere, until, by 
the blessing of God, he should accomplish the 
enterprise." Mr. Butterworth's poem, '' The Bird 
that Sang to Columbus," romantically alludes to 
the flying visits of the feathered inhabitants of 
the new lands to the ships of the little fleet : 



180 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

" Padre, 

As on we go, 

Into tlie unknown sea, 

The morning splendors rise and glow 

In new horizons still — Padre, you know 

They said in old Seville 'twould not be so; 

They said black deeps and flaming air 

Were ocean's narrow bound ; 

Light everywhere 

We've found, 

Padre. 

" Behold ! 

The fronded palms 

That fan the earth, and hold 

Aloft their mellowed fruit in dusky arms, 

Above these paradises of the sea. 

Hark ! hear the birds. — A land bird said to me 

Upon the mast on that mysterious morn 

Before the new world rose ; 

Sang, and was gone, 

Who knows. 

Padre ? 

" But he. 
That joyful bird, 
Was sent by heaven to me 
To sing the sweetest song man ever heard ! 

He came among the mutiny and strife, 

And sang his song in these new airs of life — 

Sang of the Eden of those glorious seas, 

Then Westward made his flight, 

On the land breeze. 

From sight, 

Padre." 

" Columbus was now at open defiance with his 
crew, and his situation became desperate. Fortu- 
nately the manifestations of the vicinity of land 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 181 

were such on the foUowiDg day as no longer to 
admit a doubt. Beside a quantity of fresh weeds, 
such as grow in rivers, they saw a green fish of a 
kind which keeps about rocks ; then a branch of 
thorn with berries on it, and recently separated 
from the tree, floated by them ; then they picked 
up a reed, a small board, and, above all, a staff 
artificially carved. All gloom and mutiny now 
gave way to sanguine expectation ; and through- 
out the day each one was eagerly on the watch 
in hopes of being the first to discover the long- 
sought-for land. 

" In the evening, when, according to invariable 
custom on board of the admiral's ship, the mariners 
had sung the Salve Regina, or vesper hymn to 
the Virgin, he made an impressive address to his 
crew.^ He pointed out the gooduess of God in 

* In the evening, according to the invariable custom on board 
the Admiral's ship, the mariners sang the Yesper Hymn to the 
Virgin." — Ieviis'G, Bk. iii., chap. iv. 

" Ave Maris Stella,^^ 
Hail thou Star of the Sea ! 



1 82 COL UMB US THE NA VIGATOR. 

thus conducting them by soft and favoring 
breezes across a tranquil ocean, cheering their 
hopes continually with fresh signs, increasing as 
their fears augmented, and thus leading and 
guiding them to a promised land. He now re- 
minded them of the orders he had given on 
leaving the Canaries, that, after sailing westward 
seven hundred leagues, they should not make sail 
after midnight. Present appearances authorized 
such a precaution. He thought it probable 

^^ Dei Mater Alma,'^ 

Sweet mother, we trust in thee. 

'■'■ Atque semper Virgo,"" 
Virgin for aye remaining, 
^' Fcelix Ceolix 2)orta" 
Heaven' s portal now maintaining. 

*' Sumens illiid are," 
O thou by angel blest, 
*' Gabrielis ore,''' 
Guard now om- nightly rest. 

*' Funda nos in pace," 
Grant unto us thy peace, 
" Mutans Er.ae nomen,"" 
Vnien life's long toil shall cease. 

From the Cantata, 

" The Voyage of Columbus,^^ by 
PuDLEY Buck, 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 183 

they would make land that very night; he or- 
dered, therefore, a \4gilant look-out to be kept 
from the forecastle, promising to whomsoever 
should make the discovery a doublet of velvet, 
in addition to the pension to be given by the 
sovereigns. 

" The breeze had been fresh all day, with more 
sea than usual, and they had made great pro- 
gress. At sunset they had stood again to the 
west, and were ploughing the waves at a rapid 
rate, the Pinta keeping the lead, from her supe- 
rior sailing. The greatest animation prevailed 
throughout the ships ; not an eye was closed that 
night. As the evening darkened, Columbus took 
his station on the top of the castle or cabin on 
the high poop of his vessel, ranging his eye along 
the dusky horizon, and maintaining an intense 
and unremitting watch. About ten o'clock, he 
thought he beheld a light glimmering at a great 
distance. Fearing his eager hopes might deceive 
him, he called to Pedro Gutierrez, gentleman of 



184 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

the king's bed-chamber, and inquired whether he 
saw such a Hght ; the latter rephed in the affirma- 
tive. Doubtful whether it might not yet be some 
delusion of the fancy, Columbus called Rodrigo 
Sanchez of Segovia, and made the same inquiry. 
By the time the latter had ascended the round-house 
the Hght had disappeared. They saw it once or 
twice afterwards in sudden and passing gleams ; as 
if it were a torch in the bark of a fisherman, rising 
and sinking with the waves ; or in the hand of 
some person on shore, borne up and down as he 
walked from house to house. So transient and 
uncertain were these gleams that few attached 
any importance to them ; Columbus, however, 
considered them as certain signs of land, and, 
moreover, that the land was inhabited. They 
continued their course until two in the morning, 
when a gun from the Pinta gave the joyful sig- 
nal of land. It was first descried by a mariner 
named Rodrigo de Triana; but the reward was 
afterward adjudged to the admiral, for having pre- 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 185 

viously perbeived the light. The land was now 
clearly seen about two leagues distant, whereupon 
they took in sail, and laid to, waiting impatiently 
for the dawn." Such is Irving' s circumstantial 
and romantic account. It is doubtless near enough 
tothe truth for all present purposes." 

" The thoughts and feelings of Columbus in 
this little space of time," says Irving, " must have 
been tumultuous and intense. At length, in spite 
of every difficulty and danger, he had accomplished 
his object. The great mystery of the ocean was 
revealed ; his theory, which had been the scoff 
of sages, was triumphantly established ; he had 
secured to himself a glory durable as the world 
itself. 

"It is difficult to conceive the feelings of such 
a man, at such a moment; or the conjectures 
which must have thronged upon his mind as to 
the land before him, covered with darkness. That 
it was fruitful, was evident from the vegetables 
which floated from its shores. He thought, toO/ 



186 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

that he perceived the fragrance of aromatic groves. 
The moving Hght he had beheld proved it the 
residence of man. But what were its inhabitants ? 
Were they like those of the other parts of the 
globe; or were they some strange and monstrous 
race, such as the imagination was prone in those 
times to give to all remote and unknown regions ? 
Had he come upon some wild island far in the 
Indian sea ; or was this the famed Cipango itself, 
the object of his golden fancies ? A thousand 
speculations of the kind must have swarmed upon 
him, as, with his anxious crews, he waited for the 
night to pass away ; wondering whether the morn- 
ing light would reveal a savage wilderness, or 
dawn upon spicy groves, and ghttering fanes, and 
gilded cities, and all the splendor of Oriental civ- 
ilization." 

This was the memorable night of the eleventh 
of October. The next morning, the twelfth, — and 
again it was a Friday — Columbus first beheld the 
soil, the trees, and the people of the New World. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 1^* 

Landing in great pomp, with all his captains and 
their crews, he named the island San Salvador, 
(its native name was Guanahani) and took formal 
possession thereof in the name of Ferdinand and 
Isabella.'^ 

* For many years much uncertainty existed as to the precise spot 
where Cohimbus first landed in the New World, and only lately 
has the moot point been settled. For this distinction we also find 
many claimants ; and perhaps it is not surprising that, since the 
Bahamas or Lucayos stretch for hundreds of miles and contain 
hundreds of islands, some of them resembling each other in gen- 
eral character, the chain should contain several that tally more or 
less with the descriptions preserved to us in the log book of Colum- 
bus. The Indians called it Guanahani ; Columbus gratefully 
named it San Salvador. Irving found that tradition pointed to 
Cat Island as the one seen when that joyful cry of " Land !" was 
raised from the Pinta, and Humboldt sustained this view. But 
ISTavarette identified it rather with the Grande Salina of the Turk 
Islands ; Yarnhagen thought it to be Marignana ; Munoz, as early 
as 1798, pointed out that Watling Island, about fifty miles south- 
east of Cat Island, was the true land-fall of Columbus ; Capt. 
Fox, favored the claims of the little island called Samana. The 
claims of Watling Island are supported by Munoz, and by such 
authorities as A. B. Becher, Peschel, Petermann, Major, and 
Blake. Gov. Blake is in some respects the most important, be- 
cause his conclusions were those of personal study while he was 
Governor of the Bahamas, and were reached by going from island 
to island with a copy of the log book of Columbus in his hand and 
following his course. 

"About midnight between the 11th and 12th of October," says 
a recent writer, " Columbus, on watch, thought he saw a light mov- 
ing in the darkness. He called a companion, and the two in coun- 
sel agreed that it was so. It may have been on an island or in 
some canoe ; or just as likely a mere delusion. The fact that 



188 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

It was a mere islet of the Bahama group, but 
to Columbus it represented a world. Though 
apparently uncultivated it seemed to be teeming 
with population, the natives soon becoming ob- 

Columbus at a later day set up a claim for the reward for the first 
discovery on the strength of this mysterious light, to the exclusion 
of the poor sailor who first actually saw land from the Pinta, has 
subjected his memory to some discredit, at least with those who 
reckon magnanimity among the virtues. At about 2 o'clock, the 
moon then shining, a mariner on the Pinta discerned unmistakably 
a low, sandy shore. In the morning a landing was made, and with 
prayer and ceremony, possession was taken of the new-found island 
in the name of the Spanish sovereigns. ' ' Wliat land was this ? Fox, 
working out Columbus's log, shows that he had sailed 3,458 miles. 
Unknown currents had helped him. The actual distance from 
Palos, in Spain to the islands he might have landed on shows an 
excess over the distance logged, to Grand Turk, 624 miles ; to 
Marignana, 426 ; to Watling, 353 ; to Cat, 317 ; to Samana, 387. 
Columbus speaks of the island as "small " and again as " pretty 
large." He calls it very level, with abundance of water and a very 
large lagoon in the middle, and it was in the last month of the 
rainy season, when the low parts of the islands are usually flooded. 

I. — Cat, or San Salvador. Alexander S. Mackenzie of the United 
States Navy worked out the problem for Irving, and this island is 
fixed upon in the latter' s " Life of Columbus." 

II. — Watling' s Island is thirteen miles long by about six broad, 
with a height of 140 feet, and having about one-third of its interior 
water. This island was suggested by Munoz in 1793, and is advo- 
cated by Capt. Becher, R. N., Pescher and R. H. Major, and is 
most carefully worked out by Lieut. J. B. Murdock. U. S. N. 

III. — G-rand Turk is five and one-half by one and a quarter miles ; 
its highest part seventy feet, and one-third of its surface is interior 
water. Navarrete, Kettell and George Gibbs adopted Grand Turk, 
and Major followed them in his first edition. 

lY. — Marignana is twenty-three and a half miles long by an 
12 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOE. 189 

jects of interest to the Spaniards, while the latter 
excited awe and veneration on the part of the 
islanders, who thought them gods from heaven. 
" The appearance of the natives," says Irving, 
" gave no promise of either wealth or civilization, 
for they were entirely naked, and painted with a 
variety of colors. With some it was confined 
merely to a part of the face, the nose, or around 
the eyes ; with others it extended to the whole 
body, and gave them a wild and fantastic appear- 
ance. Their complexion was of a tawny or copper 
hue, and they were entirely destitute of beards. 
Their hair was not crisped, like the then recently- 
discovered tribes of the African coast, under the 
same latitude, but straight and coarse, partly cut 

average of four wide : rises 101 feet, and has no interior water. It 
is argued for by De Yarnhagen of Santiago de Chile. 

V. — Samana or Attwood's Cay, is nine miles long by one and a 
half wide, with the highest ridge 100 feet. It is now uninhabited, 
but contains evidences of aboriginal habitation. It has been se- 
lected for the landfall by Gustavus Y. Fox in the United States 
Coast Survey Report for 1880. 

Watling's Island (II.) may be accepted as the landfall, though 
the matter of identification is of small importance alongside of 
the great historic fact that hereabouts land was discovered. 



190 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

short above the ears, but some locks were left long 
behind and falling upon their shoulders. Their fea- 
tures, though obscured and disfigured by paint, were 
agreeable ; they had lofty foreheads and remarkably 
fine eyes. They were of moderate stature and well 
shaped ; most of them appeared to be under thirty 
years of age ; there was but one female with them, 
quite young, naked Hke her companions, and 
beautifully formed. As Columbus supposed him- 
seK to have landed on an island at the extremity of 
India, he called the natives by the general appella- 
tion of Indians, which was universally adopted 
before the true nature of his discovery was known, 
and has since been extended to all the aboriginals 
of the New World. 

" The islanders were friendly and gentle. 
Their only arms were lances, hardened at the end 
by fire, or pointed with a flint, or the teeth or 
bone of a fish. There was no iron to be seen, 
nor did they appear acquainted with its proper- 
ties ; for, when a drawn sword was presented to 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. IPX 

them, they unguardedly took it by the edge. 
Cokimbus distributed among them colored caps, 
glass beads, hawks' bells, and other trifles, such 
as the Portuguese were accustomed to trade with 
among the natives of the gold coast of Africa. 
They received them eagerly, hung the beads round 
their necks and were wonderfully pleased with 
their finery, and with the sound of the bells. 
The Spaniards remained all day on :hore refresh- 
ing themselves after their anxious voyage amidst 
the beautiful groves of the island, and returned 
on board late in the evening, delighted with all 
they had seen. 

" On the following morning, at break of day, 
the shore was thronged with the natives ; some 
swam off to the ships, others came in light barks 
which they called canoes, formed of a single 
tree, hollowed, and capable of holding from one 
man to the number of forty or fifty. These they 
managed dexterously with paddles, and, if over- 
turned, swam about in the water with perfect un- 



192 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

concern, as if in their natural element, righting 
their canoes with great facility, and baling them 
with calabashes. They were eager to procure 
more toys and trinkets, not, apparently, from any 
idea of their intrinsic value, but because every- 
thing from the hands of the strangers possessed 
a supernatural virtue in their eyes, as having been 
brought from heaven ; they even picked up frag- 
ments of glass and earthenware as valuable prizes. 
They had but few objects to offer in return, ex- 
cept parrots, of which great numbers were domes- 
ticated among them, and cotton yarn, of which 
they had abundance, and would exchange large 
balls of five-and-twenty pounds' weight for the 
merest trifle. They brought also cakes of a kind 
of bread called cassava, which constituted a princi- 
pal part of their food, and was afterwards an im- 
portant article of provisions with the Spaniards. 
It was formed from a great root called yuca, which 
they cultivated in fields. This they cut into small 
morsels, which they grated or scraped and strained 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1 . 3 

in a press, making a broad thin cake, which was 
afterwards dried hard, and would keep for a long 
time, being steeped in water when eaten. It was 
insipid, but nourishing, though the water strained 
from it in the preparation was a deadly poison. 
There was another kind of yuca destitute of this 
poisonous quality, which was eaten in the root, 
either boiled or roasted, 

" The avarice of the discoverers was quickly 
excited by the sight of small ornaments of gold, 
worn by some of the natives in their noses. These 
the latter gladly exchanged for glass beads and 
hawks' bells ; and both parties exulted in the bar- 
gain, no doubt admiring each other's simplicity. 
As gold, however, was an object of royal monop- 
oly in all enterprises of discovery, Columbus for- 
bade any traffic in it without his express sanction ; 
and he put the same prohibition on the traffic for 
cotton, reserving to the crown all trade for it, 
wherever it should be found in any quantity. 

'' He inquired of the natives where this gold 



194 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

was procured. They answered him by signs, 
pointing to the south, where, he understood them, 
dwelt a king of such wealth that he was served in 
vessels of wrought gold. He understood, also, 
that there was land to the south, the southwest, 
and the northwest : and that the people from the 
last mentioned quarter frequently proceeded to 
the southwest in quest of gold and precious stones, 
making in their way descents upon the islands 
and carrying off the inhabitants. Several of the 
natives showed him scars of wounds received in 
battles with these invaders. A great part of this 
fancied intelligence was self-delusion on the part 
of Columbus ; for he was under a spell of the 
imagination, which gave its own shapes and colors 
to every object. He was persuaded that he had 
arrived among the islands described by Marco 
Polo, as l}ing opposite to Cathay, in the Chinese 
Sea, and he construed everything to accord with 
the account given of those opulent regions. Thus 
the enemies which the natives spoke of as coming 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 1^5 

from the northwest he concluded to be the people 
of the mainland of Asia, the subjects of the great 
Khan of Tartary, who were represented by the 
Venetian traveller as accustomed to make war 
upon the islands, and to enslave their inhabitants. 
The country to the south, abounding in gold, 
could be 'no other than the famous island of 
Cipango ; and the king who was served out of 
vessels of gold must be the monarch whose mag- 
nificent city and gorgeous palace, covered with 
plates of gold, had been extolled in such splendid 
terms by Marco Polo." 

The smallness of San Salvador made Columbus 
deem it not worth colonizing, and having taken 
in a fresh supply of water they set sail once more. 
But he was at a loss which way to steer, although 
he had no doubt but that he " was among the 
islands described by Marco Polo as studding the 
vast sea of Chin or China, and lying at a great dis- 
tance from the mainland. These, according to the 
Venetian, amounted to between seven and eight 



196 COL UMB US THE NA, VIGA TOE. 

thousand, and abounded with drugs and spices 
and odoriferous trees, together with gold and 
silver." 

Within sight on every hand were other islands 
similar to San Salvador, which the natives asserted 
were, like it, green and luxuriously fertile and 
populous. About fifteen miles away was one 
island, larger than San Salvador, whose inhabi- 
tants were asserted to be richer than their neigh- 
bors, wearing gold ornaments in profusion. The 
magic name of " gold " was enough to fire every 
heart on board the fleet; Columbus himself, 
believing that he was among the opulent Indies, 
was dazzled at the idea of exploring so rich an 
archipelago. The next day they anchored off the 
second island, which was also annexed to Spain, 
and which Columbus named Santa Maria de le 
Conception. The same scenes were repeated that 
had occurred at San Salvador, and the natives were 
found to be in similar circumstances and of the 
same dispositions — utterly devoid of all that the 



COL TTMB US THE l^A VIGA TOR. 1 97 

Spaniards regarded as wealth, and extremely gen- 
tle and simple. There was no gold and no sign 
of any. 

Upwards of two weeks w^re spent by Columbus 
cruising about among these islands of the Bahama 
group, seeking in vain to find an imaginary mon- 
arch and a clue to the riches which he was posi- 
tive existed in this region. One delusion after 
another was swept away, but others rose to fill 
their places. A few gold trinkets were found on 
the natives, and on questioning them as to where 
this was procured Columbus learned of a great 
island to the south called Cuba ; his own hopes 
and wishes so colored the accounts of the simple 
people that he "understood it to be of great ex- 
tent, abounding in gold and pearls and spices, 
carrying on an extensive commerce in these arti- 
cles in large merchant ships." The natives in 
speaking of this island used the word " Cubana- 
can;" they merely meant "the center of Cuba;" 
but here was the talisman which Columbus sought ! 



198 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

This must be the land of Kublai Khan^ the rich 
Cipango of Marco Polo and other romancers. So, 
on October 24, every sail was spread to the breeze, 
the fleet steered west-south-west, and after three 
days' sailing, on the morning of October 28th, 
came in sight of Cuba, then as now, the Pearl 
of the Antilles. 

But here also they found no gold, nor pearls, 
nor spices. When they showed the natives sam- 
ples of cinnamon and dye-woods they declared that 
these things grew only to the southward. Con- 
vinced, however, that he was on the shores of 
Cipango, Columbus pushed inland by way of a 
river to find the king, named Guancanagari, by 
whom he was received most cordially — but he was 
not the great, the all-powerful Grand Khan. 

However, two commodities in use by the natives 
came to the notice of the Spaniards, though at 
first they accounted them of no value. The first 
was the potato, and the second was tobacco ; the 
last, " commercially speaking, proved more pro- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 199 

ductive to the Spanish crown than all the gold 
mines of the Indies." 

While sojourning on the coast of Cuba^ Martin 
Alonzo Pinzon deserted with the Pinta, He had 
heard from the natives of a certain island whence 
all the gold was said to come, and hoped to fore- 
stall Columbus in the discovery of this El Dorado. 
Thus early in the history of the Spanish dominion 
in the New World did the greed for gold manifest 
itself. Pinzon did secure a large amount of the 
precious metal by barter ; one half he kept for him- 
self, the rest he divided among his crew to secure 
their silence. Here, also, the admiral's ship, the 
Santa Maria j was wrecked on a reef through dis- 
obedience of orders on the part of her pilot. 
With her timbers Columbus built a fort, which he 
called La Navidad, having determined to leave a 
colony in Cuba. This he did, entrusting its care 
to a small band of his followers, whom he com- 
mended to the care of the good king Guacanagari. 
The admiral then shifted his flag to the Nina, the 
only vessel left to the admiral. 



200 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

It is worthy of note that Columbus never en- 
tirely circumnavigated Cuba, and to the day of his 
death supposed that it was a part of the mainland 
of America ! 

Naturally Columbus was anxious to return to 
Spain, to announce his triumph. His fleet was 
reduced in strength, and his remaining vessel was 
badly strained. So, after making such repairs as 
were possible, the admiral set sail for Spain on the 
4th of January, 1493, taking several natives with 
him to exhibit to the Old World. Scarcely had 
the anchor been weighed, however, when the Pinta 
hove in sight, which was all the more welcome 
since the Nina was the smallest of the fleet. Pin- 
zon explained his desertion on the plea that he had 
been forced to part company by stress of weather, 
and Columbus accepted his excuses, though he did 
not believe them. Some writers have thought it 
more than probable that Pinzon, in possession of 
private information, had been off on a little search 
on his own account. 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 201 

They coasted along the island of Hispaniola;, or 
Hayti, as far as the Bay of Samana, and at last, 
on the sixteenth of January, left this bay home- 
ward bound, although the admiral deviated from 
his course at first in the hope of finding the island 
of Babeque, peopled with Amazons, described by 
Marco Polo, of which he had understood the natives 
of Hayti to give him intelligence. Such a discovery 
would be, he considered, a conclusive proof of the 
identity of his new country with Marco Polo's 
Indies, and when four natives offered to act as his 
guides he thought it worth while to steer (in the 
direction of Martinique) in quest of the fabulous 
Amazonians. But the breeze blew towards Spain ; 
home-sickness took possession of the crews ; mur- 
murs arose at the prolongation of the voyage 
among the currents and reefs of those strange 
seas ; and, in deference to the universal wish of 
his companions, Columbus soon abandoned all idea 
of further discovery, and resumed his course for 
Europe, 



202 COLUMBUS TEE NAVIGATOR. 

" At first the voyage was tranquil enough, 
thougli the adverse trade- winds and the bad sail- 
ing of the Pinta retarded the progress of both 
vessels. But on the tweKth of February a storm 
overtook them, and became more and more furious, 
until on the fourteenth it rose to a hurricane, 
before which Pinzon's vessel could only drift help- 
lessly, while the Nina was able to set a close- 
reefed foresail, which kept her from being buried 
in the trough of the sea. In the evening both 
caravels were scudding under bare poles, and when 
darkness fell, and the signal light of the Pinta 
gleamed farther and farther off, through the blind- 
ing spray, until at last it could be seen no more, 
when his panic-stricken crew gave themselves up 
to despair, as the winds howled louder and louder, 
and the seas, burst over his frail vessel — then, in- 
deed, without a single skilled navigator to advise 
or to aid him, Columbus must have felt himself 
alone with the tempest and the night. But his 
brave heart bore him up, and his wonderful ca- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 203 

pacity for devising expedients on sudden emer- 
gencies did not forsake him. As the stores were 
consumed, the Nina felt the want of the ballast 
which Columbus had intended to take on board at 
the Amazonian island. ' Fill the empty casks 
with water/ he said, ' and let them serve as bal- 
last/ an expedient which has grown common 
enough now, but which then was probably origi- 
nal" 

During the height of the storm Columbus and 
his crew, after the manner of the time, made a 
vow to the Virgin that they would all go in pil- 
grimage on foot to the first shrine they met should 
they be permitted to reach land. This vow was 
productive of some unlooked-for consequences, as 
will be seen. After the Pinta disappeared the 
thought that the whole history of his discovery 
rested on the safety of the frail Nina filled Colum- 
bus with dismay, so he penned a biief account of 
what he had accomplished, and sealed it up in a 
stout cask, which was committed to the waves. 



204 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

Tn 1858, says Sir Arthur Helps, a paragraph went 
the rounds of the English press affirming that this 
cask had beeM picked up by the ship Chieftain 
on the coast of Africa, but the story was a hoax. 
After nearly a week of fierce tempests, the bat- 
tered little JSfiiia succeeded in reaching the island 
of St. Mary's, in the Azores. On the following 
day the ship's company proceeded on shore to 
fulfil their vow to the Virgin at a small hermitage 
or chapel on the coast. One half of the crew 
went on shore, barefoot and in their shirts, Co- 
lumbus remaining on board with the other half to 
await their return. While the first party were at 
their devotions, the Portuguese Governor, Casta- 
neda, surrounded them, and made them all pris- 
oners. Supposing that this action proceeded from 
the Portuguese hostility to himself, Columbus was 
much perplexed. The next day the weather be- 
came so tempestuous that they were driven from 
their anchorage, and obHged to stand to sea to- 
ward the island of St. Michael. For two days the 



COLUMBUS THE NAYIGATOB. 205 

ship continued beating about in great peril, half 
of her crew being detained on shore, the greater 
part of those on board being landsmen and In- 
dians, almost equally useless in difficult naviga- 
tion. Fortunately, although the waves ran high, 
there were none of those cross seas which had 
recently prevailed, otherwise, being so feebly 
manned, the caravel could scarcely have lived 
through the storm. 

'^ On the evening of the 22d, the weather having 
moderated, Columbus returned to his anchorage 
at St. Mary's. Shortly after his arrival, a boat 
came off, bringing two priests and a notary. After 
a cautious parley and an assurance of safety, they 
came on board, and requested the sight of the 
papers of Columbus, on the part of Castaneda, 
assuring him ■ that it was the disposition of the 
governor to render him every service in his power, 
provided he really sailed in the service of the 
Spanish sovereigns. Columbus supposed it a 
manoeuvre of Castaneda to cover a retreat from 



206 GOL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB, 

the hostile position he had assumed ; restraining 
his indignation, however, and expressing his thanks 
for the friendly disposition of the governor, he 
showed his letters of commission, which satisfied 
the priests and the notary. On the following 
morning the boat and mariners were liberated. 
The latter, during their detention, had collected 
information from the inhabitants which elucidated 
the conduct of Castaneda. 

" The king of Portugal, jealous lest the expedi- 
tion of Columbus might interfere with his own 
discoveries, had sent orders to his commanders of 
islands and distant ports to seize and detain him 
wherever he should be met with. In comphance 
with these orders, Castaneda had, in the first 
instance, hoped to surprise Columbus in the chapel, 
and, failing in that attempt, had intended to get 
him in his power by stratagem, but was deterred 
by finding him on his guard. Such was the 
first reception of the admiral on his return to the 
Old World, an earnest of the crosses and troubles 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. , 207 

with which he was to be requited throughout the 
remainder of his life." 

On the twenty-fourth of February the iVma again 
steered for Spain, and after encountering another 
fearful gale came to anchor in the Tagus on the 
fourth of March. To the King of Portugal 
Columbus, being in his dominions, sent a despatch 
announcing his arrival, and received a pressing 
invitation to come to the court. This he accepted, 
as he says, ^' in order not to show mistrust, al- 
though he disliked it," and the highest honors 
were showered upon the gallant navigator. 

Columbus Avisely declined the offer of a safe- 
conduct to Spanish soil by land, and on the 13th 
of March left the Tagus for the harbor of Palos, 
which he reached on the 15th — again on a Fri- 
day. 

" The enthusiasm and excitement aroused by 
the success of the expedition were unbounded. 
At Palos, especially, where few famihes had not 
a personal interest in some of the band of ex- 



208 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

plorers, the little community was filled with ex- 
traordinary delight. Not an individual member 
of the expedition but was elevated into a hero — not 
a debtor or a criminal whom the charter of im- 
munity had led, rather than bear the ills he had, 
to fly to others that he knew not of — but had ex- 
piated his social misdeeds, and had become a 
person of consideration and an object of enthu- 
siasm. The court was at Barcelona. Immediately 
on his arrival Columbus despatched a letter to 
the king and queen, stating in general terms the 
success of his project ; and proceeded forthwith 
to present himself in person to their highnesses. 
Almost at the same time, the Pinta, which had 
been separated from her consort in the first storm 
which they encountered, made the port of Bayonne, 
whence Pinzon had forwarded a letter to the 
sovereigns, announcing ' his ' discoveries, and pro- 
posing to come to court and give full intelHgence 
as to them. Columbus, whom he probably sup- 
posed to have perished at sea, he seems to have 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 209 

ignored utterly, and when he received a reply 
from the king and queen, directing him not to go 
to court without the admiral, chagrin and grief 
overcame him to such an extent that he took to 
his bed; and if any man ever died from mental 
distress and a broken heart, that man was Martin 
Alonzo Pinzon." 

Columbus was now the foremost man in all the 
Spanish peninsula, and, indeed, in the whole 
world. " The court prepared a solemn reception 
for the admiral at Barcelona, where the people 
poured out in such numbers to see him that the 
streets could not contain them. A triumphal 
procession like his the world had not yet seen. 
The captives that accompanied a Roman general's 
car might be strange barbarians of a tribe from 
which Eome had not before had slaves. But 
barbarians were not unknown creatures. Here, 
with Columbus, were beings of a new world. 
Here was the conqueror, not of man, but of 
nature, not of flesh and blood, but of the fearful 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 211 

unknown, of the elements, and, more than all, of 
the prejudices of centuries. We may imagine 
the rumors that must have gone before his com- 
ing. And now he was there. Ferdinand and 
Isabella had their thrones placed in the presence 
of the assembled court. Columbus approached 
the monarchs, and then, ' his countenance beam- 
ing with modest satisfaction,' knelt at the king's 
feet, and begged leave to kiss their highnesses' 
hands. They gave their hands ; then they bade 
him rise, and be seated before them. He re- 
counted briefly the events of his voyage — a story 
more interesting than the tale told in the court of 
Dido by ^neas, like whom he had almost perished 
close to home — and he concluded his unpretend- 
ing narrative by showing what new things and 
creatures he had brought with him. Ferdinand 
and Isabella fell on their knees, giving thanks to 
God with many tears; and then the choristers of 
the royal chapel closed the grand ceremonial by 
singing the ^ Te Deum.' Afterwards men walked 



212 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

home grave and yet happy, having seen the sym- 
bol of a great work, something to be thought over 
for many a generation." 

The agreement between Columbus and their 
Cathohc Majesties was carried out to the letter ; 
the title of " Don " was bestowed on him, together 
with a special coat of arms. The sovereigns ap- 
pHed to the Pope for a grant of the lands to be 
discovered in the " Indies," and, to appease the 
rival thrones of Spain and Portugal, " the Pontiff 
divided the Spanish and Portuguese Indian 
sovereignties by a line drawn from pole to pole 
one hundred leagues west of the Azores and the 
Cape de Yerde Islands." 

In his " Songs of History " Hezekiah Butter- 
worth has thrilhngly described the triumph of 
Columbus under the title, " The Thanksgiving for 
America." We give the poem entire : 

I. 

'Twas night upon the Darro. 
The risen moon above the shadowy tower 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 213 

Of Comares shone, the silver sun of night, 

And poured its lustrous splendors through the halls 

Of the Alhambra. 

The air was breathless, 
Yet filled with ceaseless songs of nightingales, 
And odors sweet of falling orange blooms ; 
The misty lamps were burning odorous oil ; 
The uncurtained balconies were full of life, 
And laugh and song, and airy castanets. 
And gay guitars. 

Afar Sierras rose, 
Domes, towers, and pinnacles, over royal heights. 
Whose crowns were gemmed with stars. 

The Generaliffe, 
The summer palace of old Moorish kings 
In vanished years, stood sentinel afar, 
A pile of shade, as brighter grew the moon, 
Impearling foimtain sprays, and shimmering 
On seas of citron orchards cool and green. 
And terraces embowered with vernal vines 
And breathing flowers. 

In shadowy arcades 
"Were loitering priests, and here and there 
A water-carrier parsed with tinkling bells. 

There came a peal of horns, 
That woke Granada, city of delights, 
From its long moonlight reverie. Again :— 
The suave lute ceased to play, and Castanet , 
The wate>bearer stopped, and ceased his song 
The wandering troubadour. 

Then rent the air 
Another joyous peal, and oped the gates 



214 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

And entered there a train of cavaliers, 
Their helmets glittering in the low red moon. 

The streets and balconies 
All danced with wondering life. The train moved on, 
And filled the air again the horns melodious, 
And loud the heralds shouted : — 

" Thy name, O Fernando, through all earth shall be 

sounded, 
Columbus has triumphed, his foes are confounded."" 

A silence followed. 
Could such tidings be ? Men heard and whispered, 
Eyes glanced to eyes, feet uncertain moved, 
Never on mortal ears had fallen words 
Like these. And was the earth a star ? 

On marched the cavaliers, 
And pealed again the horns, and again cried 
The heralds : — 

" Thy name Isabella, through all earth shall be sounded; 
Columbus has triumphed, his foes are confounded ! " 

All hearts were thrilled. 
"Isabella ! " That name breathed faith and hope 
And lofty aim. Emotion swayed the crowds ; 
Tears flowed, and acclamations rose, and rushed 
The wondering multitudes towards the plaza. 
' ' Isabella ! Isabella ! " it filled 
The air — that one word ' ' Isabella ! ' ' 

And now 
'Tis noon of night. The moon hangs near the earth — 
A golden moon in golden air ; the peaks 



COLUMBUS THE NAYIGATOB. 215 

Like silver tents of shadowy sentinels 
Glint 'gainst the sky. The plaza gleams and surges 
Like a sea. The joyful horns peal forth again, 
And falls a hush, and cry the heralds : — 

" Thy name, Isabella, shall he praised by all the living ; 
Haste, haste to Barcelona, and join the Great Thanks- 
giving ! ' ' 

What nights had seen Granada ! 
Yet never one like this ! The moon went down. 
And fell the wings of shadow, yet the streets 
Still swarmed with people hurrying on and on. 

II. 

Morn came, 
With bursts of nightingales and quivering fires. 
The cavaliers rode forth towards Barcelona. 
The city followed, throbbing with delight. 
The happy troubadour, the muleteer. 
The craftsmen all, the boy and girl, and e'en 
The mother— 'twas a soft spring morn ; 
The fairest skies of earth those April morns 
In Andalusia. Long was the journey, 
But the land was flowers, and nights were not, 
And birds sang all the hours, and breezes cool 
Fanned all the ways along the sea. 

The roads were filled 
With hurrying multitudes. For well 'twas known 
That he the conqueror, viceroy of the isles. 
Was riding from Seville to meet the king. 
•And what were conquerors before to him whose eye 
Had seen the world a star, and found the star a world ? 



21 6 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

Once he had walked 
The self-same ways, roofless and poor and sad, 
A beggar at old convent doors, and heard 
The very children jeer him in the streets, 
And ate his crust, and made his roofless bed 
Upon the flowers beside his boy, and prayed, 
And found in trust a pillow radiant 
With dreams immortal. N'ow ? 

III. 

That was a glorious day 
That dawned on Barcelona. Banners filled 
The thronging towers, the old bells rung, and blasts 
Of lordly trumpets seemed to reach the sky 
Cerulean. All Spain had gathered there, 
And waited there his coming ; Castilian knights, 
Gay cavaliers, hidalgos young, and e'en the old 
Puissant grandees of far Aragon, 
With glittering mail, and waving plumes, and all 
The peasant multitude with bannerets 
And charms and flowers. 

Beneath pavilions 
Of brocades of gold, the Court had met. 
The dual crowns of Leon old and proud Castile 
There waited him, the peasant mariner. 

The trumpets waited 
Near the open gates ; the minstrels young and fair 
Upon the tapestries and arrased walls. 
And everywhere from all the happy provinces 
The wandering troubadours^. 

Afar was heard 
A cry, a long acclaim. Afar was seen 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 21 7 

A proud and stately steed with nodding plumes, 
Bridled with gold, whose rider stately rode, 
And still afar a long and sinuous train 
Of silvery cavaliers. A shout arose, 
And all the city, all the vales and hills, 
With silvery trumpets rung. 

He came, the Genoese, 
With reverent look and calm and lofty mien. 
And saw the wondering eyes and heard the cries 
And trumpet peals, as one who followed still 
Some Guide unseen. 

Before his steed 
Crowned Indians marched with lowly faces. 
And wondered at the new world that they saw ; 
Gay parrots shouted from their gold-bound arms. 
And from their crests swept airy plumes. The sun 
Shone full in splendor on the scene, and here 
The old and new world met. But — 



IV. 



Hark ! the heralds ! 
How they thrill all hearts and fill all eyes with tears ! 
The very air seems throbbing with delight ; 
Hark ! hark ! the cry, in chorus all they cry : — 

" A Castilla y a Leon, a Castilla y a Leon^ 
Huevo mundo dio Colon .'" 

Every heart now beats with his. 
The stately rider on whose calm face shines 
A heaven-born inspiration. Still the shout : 
" Nuevo mundo dio Colon I " how it rings! 




C mUan Monument, designed by Jose de Manjarres. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOlt. 219 

From wall to wall, from knights and cavaliers, 
And from the multitudinous throngs, 
A mighty chorus of the vales and hills ! 
" A Castilla y a Leon ! " 

And now the golden steed 
Draws near the throne ; the crowds mov back, and 
rise 
The reverent crowns of Leon and Castile ; " 
And stands before the tear-filled eyes of all 
The multitudes the form of Isabella. 
Semiramis ? Zenobia ? What were they 
To her, as met her eyes again the eyes of him 
* Into whose hands her love a year before 
Emptied its jewels ! 

He told his tale : 
The untried deep, the green Sargasso Sea, 
The varyiny compass, the affrighted crews. 
The hymn they sung on every doubtful eve, 
The sweet hymn to the Virgin. How there came 
The land birds singing, and the drifting weeds. 
How broke the mom on fair San Salvador, 
How the Te Deum on that isle was sung. 
And how the cross was lifted in the name 
Of Leon and Castile. And then he turned 
His face towards Heaven, " O Queen ! O Queen ! 
There kingdoms wait the triumphs of the cross ! ' ' 



V. 



Then Isabella rose, 
With face illumined : then overcome with joy 
She sank upon her knees, and king and court 



220 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

And nobles rose and knelt beside her, 
And followed them the sobbing multitude ; 
Then came a burst of joy, a chorus grand, 
And mighty antiphon — 

" We praise thee, Lord, and, Lord, acknoicledge thee, 
And give thee glory ! — Holy, Holy, Holy ! " 

Loud and long it swelled and thrilled the air, 
That first Thanksgiving for the new-found world ! 

YI. 

The twilight roses bloomed 
In the far skies o' er Barcelona. 
The gentle Indians came and stood before 
The throne, and smiled the queen, and said : 
" I see my gems again." The shadow fell. 
And trilled all night beneath the moon and stars 
The happy nightingales. 

During the festivities at Barcelona the nine 
Indians brought home by Columbus we]?e baptized. 
Shortly afterward one of them died, and the 
Catholic theologians of the time gravely an- 
nounced that he was the first of his race to enter 
heaven ! 

Thus ended the first voyage of Columbus, which 
gave a new continent to civiHzation, as a result of 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 221 

which Columbus himself rose to the summit of 
his fame and favor. 

" It is wonderful," says a recent writer, " how 
much was discovered during that first expedition. 
It was then that Columbus found the potato, 
which has come to be so important to mankind, 
as well as tobacco, which the natives smoked in 
the form of ^ dry weeds, rolled up in a leaf, which 
was dry also, shaped liked the paper muskets the 
boys made on the feast of Pentecost ; and light- 
mg one end of it, they suck the other, and absorb 
or inhale the smoke.' Of course there were novel 
fruits and spices, enormous reeds and gourds, and 
cotton so abundant that in a single house 12,000 
pounds of it were found spun, and rolled in balls, 
although it seemed to be used for Httle but ham- 
mocks and women's aprons." 



222 GOL UMB US THE NA VIGATOB. 



RESULTS AND REWARDS. 

" Thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges." 

Scarcely were the sails of the Pinta and the 
Nina dry than the monarehs of Spain commanded 
that a second fleet be fitted out, Avith which to 
further explore the new-found continent, and 
better secure the same to their crowns. There 
was need for haste, for John the Second, of Portu- 
gal, was believed to be about to seize by stratagem 
what he had lost by timidity. Regretting too 
late that the project of Columbus had been 
spurned and scoffed at, John also equipped a large 
force of ships, the avowed destination of which 
was Africa, but which had secret instructions to 
sail Westward Ho ! and grab a goodly slice of the 
so-called Indies. But Ferdinand was a master of 
all the arts of intrigue, and he managed to en- 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 223 

tangle the King of Portugal in long-drawn-out 
negotiations conducted by slow-moving embassies 
until the Spanish fleet was well advanced. 

Frequently, during this long interchange of 
international courtesies, the Spanish sovereigns 
wrote to Columbus, urging the utmost despatch. 
But the admiral needed no spurring ; he was too 
anxious to be afloat once more, with a goodly 
force at his back, and on the way to further ex- 
plore his " Indies." 

" Twelve caravels and five smaller vessels were 
made ready, and were laden with horses and other 
animals, and with plants, seeds, and agricultural 
implements for the cultivation of the new coun- 
tries. Artificers of various trades were engaged, 
and a quantity of merchandise and gaudy trifles, 
fit for bartering with the natives, were placed on 
board. There was no need to press men into the 
service now ; volunteers for the expedition were 
only too numerous. The fever for discovery was 
universal. Columbus was confident that he had 



224 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOU. 

been on the outskirts of Cathay, and that the 
scriptural land of Havilah, the home of gold, was 
not far off. Untold riches were to be acquired, 
and probably there was not one of the 1,500 per- 
sons who took ship in the squadron that did not 
anticipate a prodigious fortune as the reward of 
the voyage. Nor was what continued to be the 
great object of these discoveries uncared for. 
Twelve missionaries, eager to enlighten the 
spiritual darkness of the western lands, were 
placed under the charge of Bernard Buil, a Bene- 
dictine monk, who was specially appointed by the 
Pope, in order to ensure an authorized teaching 
of the faith, and to superintend the religious edu- 
cation of the Indians. The instructions to Co- 
lumbus, dated the 29th of May, 1493, are the first 
strokes upon that obdurate mass of colonial diffi- 
culty which, at last, by incessant working of great 
princes, great churchmen, and great statesmen, 
was eventually to be hammered into some righteous 
form of wisdom and of mercy. In the course of 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 025 

these instructions, the admiral is ordered to labor 
in all possible ways to bring the dwellers in the 
Indies to a knowledge of the Holy Catholic Faith. 
And that this may the easier be done, all the 
armada is to be charged to deal ' lovingly ' with 
the Indians ; the admiral is to make them presents^ 
and to ' honor them much ' ; and, if by chance 
any person or persons should treat the Indians ill, 
in any matter whatever, the admiral is to chastise 
such ill-doers severely." 

Thousands were eager to embark for the new 
Land of Plenty, in marked contrast to the apathy 
and dread displayed at the outset of the first 
voyage. The limit had been set at one thousand ; 
but so persistent were the volunteers, " many offer- 
ing to enlist without pay," that the number ac- 
cepted was twelve hundred. But at least three 
hundred more managed to secrete themselves just 
before sailing, or got on board "by fraud and 
device," so that about fifteen hundred comprised 
the final strength of the expedition. 



226 C0LU2IBUS THE JS-AVIGATOE. 

So, on September twenty-fifth, 1493, the 
squadron set sail from Cadiz, and after taking 
in fresh water and provisions, Columbus sailed 
from Ferro for the second time, on October 13th. 
The voyage was almost uneventful, and the pas- 
sage a quick one for those days, for on the third 
of November the ships came in sight of land, 
having " by the goodness of God and the wise 
management of the admiral sailed in as straight 
a track as if they had come by a well-known and 
frequented route." The day being Sunday, the 
name Dominica was bestowed on the first island 
to which they came. Columbus had steered a 
more southerly course, '^ in the hope of falling in 
with the islands of the Caribs, of which he had 
heard such wonderful accounts from the Indians." 

At Dominica no inhabitants were found, and 
being anxious to reach the colony at La Navidad 
the fleet stood to the north and northwest, visit- 
ing and naming on the way the islands of Maria 
Galante, Guadaloupe, Montserrat, Antigua, St. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 221 

Martin, Santa Cruz, and Porto Rico. Some of 
the aborigines were asserted to be cannibals, a 
" discovery " which filled the Spaniards with 
horror. 

At length, on the twenty-second of November, 
Columbus reached Hispaniola, and coasted along 
the northern shore till he reached La Navidad. 
But not a vestige of the colony remained ! " The 
fort was razed to the ground. Not one of the 
settlers was alive to tell the tale. The account 
which Guacanagari gave to Columbus, and which 
there seems no reason to doubt, is, that the 
Spaniards who had been left behind took to evil 
courses, quarrelled amongst themselves, straggled 
about the country, and finally were set upon, 
when weak and few in numbers, by a neighboring 
Indian chief named Caonabo, who burned the tower 
and killed or dispersed the garrison, none of whom 
were ever discovered. It was in Caonabo's coun- 
try that the gold mines were reported to exist, 
and it is probable that both the cupidity and the 



228 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

profligacy of the colonists were so gross as to 
draw down upon them the not unreasonable ven- 
geance of the natives. Guacanagari, the friendly 
cacique, who had received the admiral amicably 
on his first voyage, declared that he and his tribe 
had done their utmost in defense of the Europeans, 
in proof of which he exhibited recent wounds 
which had evidently bsen inflicted by savage 
weapons. He was, naturaUy, scarcely so friendly 
as before, but communication with him was made 
easy by the aid of one of the Indians whom 
Columbus had taken to Spain, and who acted as 
interpreter. Guacanagari was willing that a 
second fort should be built on the site of the first, 
but the admiral thought it better to seek a new 
locality, both because the position of the old fort 
had been unhealthy, and because the disgusting 
licentiousness of the settlers had offended the 
Indians to such an extent that whereas they had 
at first regarded the white men as angels from 
heaven, now they considered them as debased 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 22;. 

profligates and disturbers of the peace, against 
whom they had to defend their honor and their 
lives. 

" Sailing along the coast of Hayti, Columbus 
selected a site for his projected settlement, about 
forty miles to the east of the present Cape Hay- 
tien. This he called Isabella, after his royal 
mistress. Here the ships of his squadron dis- 
charged their stores, and the Spaniards labored 
actively in the construction of the first town built 
by Europeans in the New World. But the work 
did not progress prosperously. Diseases prevailed 
among the colonists. The fatigues and discom- 
forts of a long sea voyage were not the best prep- 
arations for hard physical labor. The number 
of men which the admiral had brought out with 
him was disproportionate to his means of sustain- 
ing them. Provisions and medicines began to 
fail. And, worst of all, none of the golden 
dreams were realized, under the influence of 
which they had left Spain. Only small samples 



2oO COLUMBUS Tim NAVIGATOR. 

of the precious metal could be procured from the 
natives, and the vaguely indicated gold mines 
had not been reached. Anxiety, responsibility, 
and labor began to tell upon the iron constitution 
of the admiral, and for some time he was stretched 
upon a bed of sickness." 

The tune approached, however, when it was 
necessary to send part of the fleet back to Spain, 
and this was another source of deep annoyance to 
the ambitious mind of Columbus. " He had hoped 
to find treasures of gold and precious merchan- 
dise accumulated by the men left behind on the 
first voyage ; or at least the sources of wealthy 
traffic ascertained, by which speedily to freight 
his vessels. The destruction of the garrison had 
defeated all those hopes. He was aware of the 
extravagant expectations entertained by the sover- 
eigns and the nation. What would be their dis- 
appointment when the returning ships brought 
back nothing but a tale of disaster ? Something 
must be done, before the vessels sailed, to keep 



COL UMB lis THE NA VIGA TOB. 231 

up the fame of his discoveries, and justify his own 
magnificent representations. 

" As yet he knew nothing of the interior of the 
island. If it were really the island of Cipango, 
it must contain populous cities, existing probably 
in some more cultivated region, beyond the lofty 
mountains with which it was intersected. All the 
Indians concurred in mentioning Cibao as the 
tract of country whence they derived their gold. 
The very name of its cacique, Caonabo, signifying 
' The Lord of the Golden House,' seemed to indi- 
cate the wealth of his dominions. The tract where 
the mines were said to abound lay at a distance 
of but three or four days' journey, directly in the 
interior ; Columbus determined, therefore, to send 
an expedition to explore it, previous to the saiHng 
of the ships. If the result should confirm his 
hopes, he would then be able to send home the 
fleet with confidence, bearing tidings of the dis- 
covery of the golden mountains of Cibao. 

" The person he chose for this enterprise was 



232 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

Alonzo de Ojeda. Delighting in all service of a 
hazardous and adventurous nature, Ojeda was the 
more stimulated to this expedition from the 
formidable character of the mountain cacique, 
Caonabo, whose dominions he was to penetrate. 
He set out from the harbor, early in January, 
1494, accompanied by a small force of well-armed 
and determined men, several of them young and 
spirited cavaliers like himself. He struck directly 
southward into the interior. For the first two 
days, the march was toilsome and difficult, through 
a country abandoned by its inhabitants ; for terror 
of the Spaniards extended along the sea-coast. 
On the second evening they came to a lofty range 
of mountains, which they ascended by an Indian 
path, winding up a steep and narrow defile, and 
they slept for the night at the summit. Hence, 
the next morning, they beheld the sun rise with 
great glory over a vast and deHcious plain, covered 
with noble forests, studded with villages and 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 2o3 

hamlets, and enlivened by the shining waters of 
the Yagui. 

^^ Descending into this plain, Ojeda and his 
companions boldly entered the Indian villages. 
The inhabitants, far from being hostile, over- 
whelmed them with hospitality, and, in fact im- 
peded their journey by their kindness. They 
had to ford many rivers in traversing this plain, so 
that they were five or six days in reaching the chain 
of mountains which locked up, as it were, the 
golden region of Cibao. They penetrated into 
this district without meeting with any other ob- 
stacles than those presented by the rude nature of 
the country. Caonabo, so redoubtable for his 
courage and ferocity, must have been in some 
distant part of his dominions, for he never ap- 
peared to dispute their progress. The natives 
received them with kindness ; they were naked and 
uncivilized, like the other inhabita-its of the island, 
nor were there any traces of the important cities 
which their imaginations had once pictured forth. 



234 C'Oi UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

They saw, however, ample signs of natural wealth. 
The sands of the mountain-streams glittered with 
particles of gold ; these the natives would skill- 
fully separate and give to the Spaniards, without 
expecting a recompense. In some places they 
picked up large specimens of virgin ore from the 
beds of the torrents, and stones streaked and 
richly impregnated with it. Peter Martyr affirms 
that he saw a mass of rude gold weighing nine 
ounces, which Ojeda himself had found in one of 
the brooks. 

" All these were considered as mere superficial 
washings of the soil, betraying the hidden treasure 
lurking in the deep veins and rocky bosoms of 
the mountains, and only requiring the hand of 
labor to bring them to light. As the object of 
his expedition was merely to ascertain the nature 
of the country, Ojeda led back his little band to 
the harbor, full of enthusiastic accounts of the 
golden promise of these mountains. A young 
cavalier of the name of Gorvalan, who had been 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 235 

despatched at the same time on a similar expedi- 
tion, and who had explored a different tract of 
country, returned with similar reports. These 
flattering accounts served for a time to reanimate 
the drooping and desponding colonists, and in- 
duced Columbus to believe that it was only neces- 
sary to explore the mines of Cibao in order to 
open inexhaustible sources of riches. He de- 
termined, as soon as his health would permit, 
to repair in person to the mountains, and seek 
a favorable site for a mining establishment. 

" The season being now propitious for the 
return of the fleet, Columbus lost no time in 
despatching twelve of the ships under the com- 
mand of Antonio de Torres, retaining only five 
for the service of the colony. By this opportunity 
he sent home specimens of the gold found among 
the mountains and rivers of Cibao, and all such 
fruits and plants as were curious, or appeared to 
be valuable. He wrote in the most sanguine 
terms of the expeditions of Ojeda and Gorvalan, 



o.SG COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

the last of whom returned to Spain in the fleet 
He repeated his confident anticipations of soon 
being able to make abundant shipments of gold, 
of precious drugs, and spices ; the search for 
them being delayed for the present by the sick- 
ness of himself and people, and the cares and 
labors required in building the infant city. He 
described the beauty and fertihty of the island ; 
its range of noble mountains ; its wide, abundant 
plains, watered by beautiful rivers ; the quick 
fecundity of the soil, evinced in the luxuriant 
growth of the sugar-cane, and of various grains 
and vegetables brought from Europe. 

" As it would take some time, however, to 
obtain provisions from their fields and gardens 
and the produce of their live stock adequate to 
the subsistence of the colony, which consisted of 
about a thousand souls ; and as they could not 
accustom themselves to the food of the natives, 
Columbus requested present supplies from Spain. 
Their provisions were already growing scanty. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 237 

Much of their wine had been lost, from the bad- 
ness of the casks ; and the colonists, in their in- 
firm state of health, suffered greatly from the 
want of their accustomed diet. There was an 
immediate necessity of medicines, clothing, and 
arms. Horses were required, likewise, for the 
public works and for military service ; being 
found of great effect in awing the natives, who 
had the utmost dread of those animals. He re- 
quested also an additional number of workmen 
and mechanics, and men skilled in mining, and 
in smelting and purifying ore." 

All these glowing accounts, just as Columbus 
expected, served to keep alive the ardor of the 
monarchs. The fleet arrived in Spain on the 
second of February, 1494, and "though it 
brought back no wealth to Spain, yet expectation 
was kept alive by the sanguine letter of the ad- 
miral and by the specimens of gold and produce 
which he enclosed. The sordid calculations of 
petty spirits were as yet overruled by the enthu- 



^88 COLUMBUS THE NAYIGATOn. 

siasm of generous minds captivated by the lofty 
nature of these enterprises. 

Meantime the building of the city of Isabella 
was progressing finely, and the admiral was in- 
cessantly busy about the affairs of the colony, 
which were in a most distracted state. Scant fare 
and hard work were having their effect ; sickness 
pervaded the whole armament ; and men of all 
ranks and stations, hidalgoes, people of the court 
and ecclesiastics, were obliged to labor manually 
under regulations strictly enforced. The rage 
and vexation of these men, many of whom had 
come out with the notion of finding gold ready 
for them on the sea-shore, may be imagined ; and 
complaints of the admiral's harsh way of dealing 
with those under him (probably no harsher than 
was absolutely necessary to save them), now took 
their rise, and pursued him ever after to his ruin. 
A mutiny, headed by Bernal Diaz, a man high in 
authority, was detected and quelled before the 
mutineers could effect their intention of seizing 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 239 

the ships. Diaz was sent for trial to Spain. The 
colonists, however, were somewhat cheered after 
a time by hearing of gold mines, and seeing speci- 
mens of ore brought from thence ', and the ad- 
miral went himself and founded the Fort of St. 
Thomas in the minino^ district of Cibao. But the 
Spaniards gained very little real advantage from 
these gold mines, which they began to work 
before they had consolidated around them the 
means of living ; in fact, deaHng with the mines 
of Hispaniola as if they had been discovered in an 
old country, where the means of transit and sup- 
plies of provisions can, with certainty, be pro- 
cured. 

"There was also another evil, besides that of 
inconsiderate mining, and, perhaps, quite as mis- 
chievous a one, which stood in the way of the 
steady improvement of these early Spanish col- 
onies. The Catholic sovereigns had unfortu- 
nately impressed upon Columbus their wish that 
he should devote himself to further discovery, a 



240 COL UMJB US THE NA ViGATOB. 

wish Lut too readily adopted and furthered by 
his enterprising spirit. The hankering of the 
Spanish monarchs for further discovery was fos- 
tered by their jealousy of the Portuguese. The 
Portuguese were making their way towards India, 
going eastward. They, the Spaniards, thought 
they were discovering India, going westward. 
The more rapidly, therefore, each nation could 
advance and plant its standard, the more of 
much-coveted India it would hereafter be able to 
claim. Acting upon such views, Columbus now 
proceeded onwards, bent upon further discovery, 
notwithstanding that his little colonies at Isabella 
and St. Thomas must have needed all his sagacity 
to protect them, and all bis authority to restrain 
them. He nominated a council to manao^e the 
government during his absence, with his brother 
Don Diego as president of it ; he appointed a cer- 
tain Don Pedro Margarite as captain-general ; and 
then put to sea on the 24th of April, 1494." 
In this voyage Columbus made many important 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 241 

^^ finds " in the West Indies^ chief among which 
was the island of Jamaica and the cluster of fer- 
tile islets known as " the Garden of the Queen." 
The navigation was beset with such perils among 
the rocks and currents, sandbanks and reefs of 
the archipelago, that the admiral is said to have 
gone without sleep for thirty-two days ! As a 
result he was stricken with a grave illness, and 
the ships were compelled to return to Isabella 
with their invahded commander, where they ar- 
rived on the twenty-ninth of September, 1494. 
Columbus was ill for five months. But during 
this sickness he was cheered by the presence of 
his brother, Bartholomew Columbus, who had 
come out while the admiral was absent. Soon 
after there arrived Antonio de Torres, with sev- 
eral shiploads of suppHes for the colonists and a 
packet of letters from Ferdinand and Isabella, 
commending Columbus for his faithfulness and 
fortitude. 

But only the opportune arrival of the admiral at 



242 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

Isabella saved the settlement from the fate of La 
Navidad. During his absence the Spaniards left 
in charge had managed to alienate the natives by 
their unrestrained waste, covetousness, brutality, 
and licentiousness. They went roaming all over 
the country, and death and disaster marked their 
track, and nov/ there was " but little hope of the 
races hving peaceably together," and the Indians 
" were now swarming about the Spaniards with 
hostile intent." Even the pacific Columbus was 
forced to fight a battle with the natives, routing 
them utterly, and a " horrible slaughter ensued." 
This and other conflicts mark the commencement 
of vassalage and slavery in the West Indies and 
in Spanish America^. Columbus imposed a tribute 
upon the whole population of Hispaniola, which 
was thus arranged : 

'' Every Indian above fourteen years old, who 
was in the provinces of the mines, or near to these 
provinces, was to pay every three months a little 
bellful of gold ; all other persons in the island 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE . 248 

were to pay at the same time an arroha of cotton 
for each person. Certain brass or copper tokens 
were made — different ones for each tribute time 
— and were given to the Indians when they paid 
tribute ; and these tokens, being* worn about their 
necks, were to show who had paid tribute." Thus 
was human slavery first introduced by Europeans. 

At this time there arrived in the Indies an 
envoy from the Court of Spain named Juan 
Aguado. The Spanish monarchs had been listen- 
ing to complaints against Columbus made by some 
malcontents — Father Buil, Margarite, and others 
— who had returned to Spain, and Aguado was 
commissioned to make a thorough inquiry into 
the affairs of the colony. 

" The royal commissioner arrived at Isabella in 
October, 1495, and his proceedings in the colony, 
together with the fear of what he might report on 
his return, quickened the admiral's desire to return 
to Court, that he might fight his own battles there 
himself. For the tide of his fortune was turn- 



244 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 

ing, and this appeared by several notable signs. 
Strong as was the confidence which the sovereigns 
reposed in him, the representations of Margarlte 
and Buil — the rough soldier and the wily Bene- 
dictine — had produced their effect. They com- 
plained of the despotic rule of Columbus ; of the 
disregard of distinctions of rank which he had 
manifested by placing the hidalgoes on the same 
footing as the common men as regards work and 
rations during the construction of the settlement ; 
and of his mania for discovery, which made him 
abandon the colony already formed in the unre- 
munerative search for new countries. The com- 
missioner who was sent to investigate these 
charges, as well as to report on the condition of 
the colony, found no difficulty in collecting evi- 
dence to substantiate them. An unsuccessful 
man is generally persuaded that somebody else 
has caused his failure. And the ^ somebody else,' 
in the case of the colonists, was, by universal con- 
sent, the foreign sea-captain who had deluded 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 245 

Spanish liidalgoes by his wild projects, and had 
become a grandee under false pretenses. The 
Indians, too, who were glad to lay their miseries 
at the door of somebody, and who were told that 
Aguado was the new admiral, and had come to 
supplant the old one, were not slow to add their 
quota to the charges against Columbus. To rebut 
these accusations, as well as to protest against the 
issue of licenses to private adventurers to trade 
in the new countries independently of the admiral 
(a measure which, in violation of Columbus's 
charter, had lately been adopted), he quitted 
Isabella on the 10th of March, 1496, in the 
Nina, while Aguado took ship in another caravel. 
Many of the colonists, who had been rudely 
awakened from their golden dreams, seized this 
opportunity of returning to Spain; and the 
Cacique Caonabo was also taken on board, probably 
with a view of impressing upon him an over- 
whelming conviction of Spanish power, and of the 
futility of any efforts to resist it. 



246 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

" The voyage was a miserable one. Contrary 
winds prevailed until provisions began to run 
short, and rations were doled out in pittances 
which grew scantier and scantier until all the 
admiral's authority was needed to prevent his 
ravenous shipmates from killing and eating the 
Caribs who were on board, in retribution, so ran 
the grim jest, for their cannibalism. At last, 
when famine was imminent, after a voyage of 
three months' duration, the two caravels entered 
the Bay of Cadiz on the 11th of June, 1496. 
After about a month's delay, Columbus received 
a summons to proceed to the court, which was 
then at Burgos. In the course of his journey 
thither he adopted the same means of dazzling the 
eyes of the populace, by the display of gold and 
the exhibition of his captives, as on his return 
from his first voyage ; but so many unsuccessful 
colonists had returned, sick at heart and ruined 
in health, to tell the tale of failure to their 
countrymen, that this triumphal procession was 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOli . 247 

very unlike the last as regards the welcome ac- 
corded by the public. However, the sovereigns 
seem to have given the admiral a kind reception, 
and instead of placing him on his defense against 
the charges which had been brought forward by 
Father Buil, they listened with sympathy to his 
story of the difficulties which had beset him, and 
heard with sanguine satisfaction of the recent 
discovery of the mines from which it was said 
that the natives procured most of the gold that 
had been found in their possession, and which 
promised an incalculably rich harvest. Presently, 
in apparent confirmation of this belief, one Pedro 
Nino, a captain of the admiral's, announced his 
arrival at Cadiz, with a quantity of ' gold in bars ' 
on board his ship. It was not until great ex- 
pectations had been raised at court, and the wild- 
est ideas conceived of the magnitude of this sup- 
posed first instalment of the riches of the newly 
found gold mines, that it turned out that this 
Nino was merely a miserable maker of jokes, and 



248 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOtt . 

that the ^ gold in bars ' was only represented by 
the Indians who composed his cargo, whose 
present captivity was secured by ' bars/ and 
whose future sale was to furnish gold. This 
absurdity naturally caused Columbus and his 
friends no slight mortification, and added a fresh 
weapon to the shafts of ridicule which his enemies 
were forever launching at his extravagant theories 
and his expensive projects." 

Clearly enough the reaction had set in. The 
state of excited expectation in which the monarchs 
and the people of Spain had lived for the past 
few years was too strained to be kept up on such 
meager food as the admiral had been able to 
supply from time to time. His employers desired 
tangible and immediate results — ingots of gold, 
strings of pearls and rubies and diamonds, bales 
of rich fabrics and spices, instead of which they 
had received a few beggarly handfuls of glisten- 
ing gold-dust, some rare or new botanical speci- 
mens, and a score or so of savages. It is not 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 249 

surprising that they missed the full significance 
of the recent discoveries when Columbus himself 
was equally short-sighted. Familiarity with the 
" stupendous wonder of a newly discovered world" 
had bred contempt, and prince and populace de- 
manded new wonders as the price of their good- 
will. Then, too, the incidents which attended 
the return of the second company of voyagers 
were such as to foster distrust. The fleet had 
sailed away flushed with hope and anticipation ; 
they returned broken with disease and disaster, 
ragged, and poorer than when they set out, and 
every man among them blamed the admiral and 
scoffed at his discoveries. 

But amid all this Columbus carried an indom- 
itable and undaunted front. He reiterated his 
belief that in the island of Cuba lay the Golden 
Chersonese of the ancients, and that discoveries 
needed only to be pushed a little farther to reach 
the goal of every man's hopes. He pointed to 
the gold mines on the island of Hispaniola, and 



250 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

gravely asserted that therein he had found the 
ancient Ophir. 

On twelfth of July, 1496, Columbus Avas sum- 
moned before the sovereigns in a kind and gracious 
letter, and he set out to meet them at Burgos, 
accompanied by his natives, whom he decked out 
in all their native finery, hoping thereby to dazzle 
the eyes of all beholders. Nor was the hope vain. 
This display of the curiosities and treasures had 
for the nonce the desired efPect even with the 
monarchs, and they listened favorably to the 
admiral's suggestion of a third voyage, in which 
he undertook to push on to Terra Firma, and 
annex that to the crown. But Spain was as 
usual afflicted with foreign wars and a depleted 
treasury, and it was not until the spring of 1497 
that any serious steps were taken to fit out 
another fleet. But Columbus found that the 
statesmen and clerics in power at court were 
hostile to every suggestion he made, and not 
until Queen Isabella again took the matter in 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. '251 

hand was the requisite authority gained. At 
length, however, after a ruinous delay, on May 
30, 1498, Columbus set sail from San Luear de 
Barrameda with a squadron of six vessels and 
two hundred men on a third voyage of discovery. 
" The route he proposed to take was different 
from that pursued in his former voyage. He in- 
tended to depart from the Cape de Y erde Islands, 
saiKng to the southwest, until he should come 
under the equinoctial line, then to steer directly 
westward with the favor of the trade-winds, until 
he should arrive at land, or find himself in the 
longitude of Hispaniola. Various considerations 
induced him to adopt this course. In his pre- 
ceding voyage, when he coasted the southern 
side of Cuba, under the belief that it was the con- 
tinent of Asia, he had observed that it swept off 
toward the south. From this circumstance, and 
from information gathered among the natives of 
the Caribbee Islands, he was induced to believe 
that a great tract of the mainland lay to the south 



252 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

of the countries he had abeady discovered. King 
John n. of Portugal appears to have entertained 
a similar idea ; as Herrera records an opinion ex- 
pressed by that monarch, that there was a con- 
tinent in the Southern Ocean. If this were the 
case, it was supposed by Columbus, that, in pro- 
portion as he approached the equator, and ex- 
tended his discoveries to climates more and more 
under the torrid influence of the sun, he should 
find the productions of nature subhmated by its 
rays to more perfect and precious quahties. He 
was strengthened in this behef by a letter written 
to him at the command of the queen, by one 
Jayme Ferrer, an eminent and learned lapidary, 
who, in the course of his trading for precious 
stones and metals, had been in the Levant and 
in various parts of the East ; had conversed with 
the merchants of the remote parts of Asia and 
Africa, and the natives of India, Arabia, and 
Ethiopia, and was considered deeply versed in 
geography generally, but especially in the natural 



COL TTMB US THE ISTA VIGA TOR . 253 

histories of those countries whence the valuable 
merchandise in which he dealt was procured. In 
this letter Ferrer assured Columbus, that, accord- 
ing to his experience, the rarest objects of com- 
merce, such as gold, precious stones, drugs and 
spices, were chiefly to be found in the regions 
about the equinoctial line, where the inhabitants 
were black, or darkly colored ; and that until the 
admiral should arrive among people of such 
complexions, he did not think he would find those 
articles in great abundance." 

On Thursday, July 31, land was discovered 
toward the southwest, and proved to be the 
island of Trinidad, so named in honor of the 
Trinity, and also because when first sighted three 
lofty peaks came into view against the evening 
sky. He was now very near to the mainland, 
and on the Spanish Main of later years. Sailing 
on around Trinidad the ships entered the Gulf 
of Paria, into which the Orinoco discharges its 
immense volume of water. But still the admiral 



254 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

believed he was among islands — a delusion fos- 
tered by the very rugged and much indented 
coast-line of this part of South America. At 
length, noticing the immense torrent of water 
brought down by the rivers, Columbus began to 
suspect that the land which he had been calling 
the island of Gracia was not an island, but a con- 
tinent. But at this juncture he had no time for 
further investigation, being anxious to reach his 
colonists at Hispaniola. 

It is worth while to stop here a moment and 
glance at the workings of the mind of Columbus 
and his mental attitude towards his great discovery. 
Never was man more deluded. " We are hardly 
so much concerned with what the admiral saw 
and heard," says Sir Arthur Helps, " as with what 
he afterwards thought and reported." To under- 
stand this, it will be desirable to enter somewhat 
into the scientific questions which occupied the 
mind of this great mariner and most observant 
man. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 255 

" The discovery of the continent of America by 
Columbus, in his third voyage, was the result of 
a distinct intention on his part to discover some 
new land, and cannot be attributed to chance. 
It would be difficult to define precisely the train 
of ideas which led Columbus to this discovery. 
The Portuguese navigations were one compelling 
cause. Then the change, already alluded to, 
which Columbus had noticed in his voyages to 
the Indies, on passing a line a hundred leagues 
west of the Azores, was in his mind, as it was in 
reality, a circumstance of great moment and sig- 
nificance. It was not a change of temperature 
alone that he noticed, but a change in the heavens, 
the air, the sea, and the magnetic current. 

" In the first place, the needle of the compass, 
instead of north-easting, north-wested at this line ; 
and that remarkable phenomenon occurred just 
upon the passage of the line, as if, Columbus says, 
one passed the hill. Then the sea there was full 
of sea-weed like small pine-branches, laden with a 



256 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

fruit similar to pistachio nuts. Moreover, on pass- 
ing this imaginary hne, the admiral had invariably 
found that the temperature became agreeable, and 
the sea calm. Accordingly, in the course of this 
voyage, when they were suffering from that great 
heat which has been mentioned, he determined 
to take a westerly course, which led, as we have 
seen, to his discovering the beautiful land of 
Paria. 

" Now Columbus was one of those men of divin- 
ing minds, who must have general theories on 
which to thread their observations ; and, as few 
persons have so just a claim to theorize as those 
who have added largely to the number of ascer- 
tained facts, so Columbus may well be listened to, 
when propounding his explanation of the wonder- 
ful change in sea, air, sky, and magnetic current, 
which he discerned at this distance of a hundred 
leagues from the Azores. 

" His theory was, that the earth was not a per- 
fect sphere, but pear-shaped; and he thought 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 9,^^ 

that, as he proceeded westwards in this voyage, 
the sea went gradually rising, and his ships rising 
too, until they came nearer to the heavens. It 
is very possible that this theory had been long in 
his mind, or, at any rate, that he held it before 
he reached the coast of Paria. When there, new 
facts struck his mind, and were combined with 
his theory. He found the temperature much 
more moderate than might have been expected so 
near the equinoctial line, far more moderate than 
on the opposite coast of Africa. In the evenings, 
indeed, it was necessary for him to wear an outer 
garment of fur. Then, the natives were lighter 
colored, more astute, and braver than those of 
the islands. Their hair, too, was different. 

" Then, again, he meditated upon the immense 
volume of fresh waters which descended into the 
Gulf of Paria. And, in fine, the conclusion which 
his pious mind came to, was, that when he reached 
the land which he called the island of Gracia, he 
was at the base of the earthly Paradise. He also, 



258 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

upon reflection, concluded that it was a continent 
which he had discovered, the same continent of 
the east which he had always heen in search of ; 
and that the waters, which we now know to be a 
branch of the river Orinoco, formed one of the 
four great rivers which descended from the gar- 
den of Paradise. 

" Very different were the conjectures of the 
pilots. Some said that they were in the Sea of 
Spain ; others, in that of Scotland, and, being in 
despair about their whereabouts, they concluded 
that they had been under the guidance of the 
Devil. The admiral, however, was not a man to 
be much influenced by the sayings of the un- 
thouofhtful and the unlearned. He fortified him- 
self by references to St. Isidoro, Beda, Strabo, St. 
Ambrose, and Duns Scotus, and held stoutly to 
the conclusion that he had discovered the site of 
the earthly Paradise. It is said, that he exclaimed 
to his men, that they were in the richest country 
in the world." 



COL UMB US THE NA TIG A TOR. 259 

Columbus arrived at Hispaniola a physical 
wreck. The defects in his eyesight had grown 
so serious that " he could no longer take observa- 
tions or keep a look-out, but had to trust to the 
reports of the pilots and mariners." Throughout 
the voyage " he had been parched and consumed 
by fever, racked by gout, and his whole system 
disordered by incessant watchfulness ; he came 
into port haggard, emaciated, and almost blind." 
But his spirit was as intrepid as ever. 

A fresh source of anxiety awaited him in His- 
paniola, and retarded those discoveries he was 
burning to pursue. Affairs in the colony had 
gone all awry during his absence, and the natives 
were in a state of hostility to the colonists, mainly 
because so many of their number had been cap- 
tured and sent back to Europe as slaves. In fact, 
Columbus himself was an advocate of this trade in 
human flesh, and in his despatches he proposes 
that " the masters of vessels were to receive slaves 
from the colonists, were to carry them to Spain 



260 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

and pay for their maintenance during the voyage ; 
they were then to allow the colonists so much 
money, payable at Seville, in proportion to the 
number of slaves brought over. This money they 
would expend according to the orders of the 
colonists, who would thus be enabled to obtain 
such goods as they might stand in need of." The 
feelings of the natives in the matter were appar- 
ently never thought of. 

Columbus soon settled the ]3etty squabbles ; 
" he reduced the Indians to subjection ; the mines 
were prospering ; the Indians were to be brought 
together in populous villages, that so they might 
better be taught the Christian faith, and serve as 
vassals to the crown of Castile ; the royal revenues 
(always a matter of much concern to Columbus) 
would, he thought, in three years amount to sixty 
millions of reals ; and now there was time for him 
to sit down, and meditate upon the rebuilding of 
the temple of Jerusalem, or the conversion of 
Cathay. If there had been any prolonged quiet 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 261 

for him, such great adventures would probably 
have begun to form the staple of his high thoughts. 
But he had hardly enjoyed more than a month of 
repose when that evil came down upon him which 
^ poured the juice of aloes into the remaining 
portion of his life.' 

" The Catholic sovereigns had hitherto, upon 
the whole, behaved well to Columbus. He had 
bitter enemies at court. People were for ever 
suggesting to the monarchs that this foreigner 
was doing wrong. The admiral's son, Ferdinand, 
gives a vivid picture of some of the complaints 
preferred against his father. He says, ' When 
I was at Grranada, at the time the most serene 
Prince Don Miguel died, more than fifty of 
them (Spaniards who had returned from the In- 
dies), as men without shame, bought a great 
quantity of grapes, and sat themselves down in 
the court of the Alhambra, uttering loud cries, 
saying, that their Highnesses and the admiral 
made them live in this poor fashion on account 



262 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

of the bad pay they received, with many other 
dishonest and unseemly things, which they kept 
repeating. Such was their effrontery that when 
the CathoHc king came forth they all surrounded 
him and got him into the midst of them, saying, 
" Pay ! pay," and if by chance I and my brother, 
who were pages to the most serene Queen, hap- 
pened to pass where they were, they shouted to 
the very heavens saying, " Look at the sons of 
the admiral of Mosquitoland, of that man who 
had discovered the lands of deceit and disappoint- 
ment, a place of sepulchre and wretchedness to 
Spanish hidalgos : " adding many other insulting 
expressions, on which account we excused our- 
selves from passing by them.' " 

" Unjust clamor, like the above, would not 
alone have turned the hearts of the Catholic sov- 
ereigns against Columbus ; but this clamor was 
supported by serious grounds for dissatisfaction 
in the state and prospects of the colony; and 
when there is a constant stream of enmity and 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 263 

prejudice against a man, his conduct or his for- 
tune will, some day or other, offer an opportunity 
for it to rush in upon him. However this may 
be, soon after the return of the five vessels from 
St. Domingo, Ferdinand and Isabella appear to 
have tLken into serious consideration the ques- 
tion of suspending Columbus. He had, himself, 
in the letters transmitted by these ships, requested 
that some one might be sent to conduct the 
affairs of justice in the colony ; but, if Ferdinand 
and Isabella began by merely looking out fo.r 
such an officer, they ended in resolving to send 
one who should take the civil as well as judicial 
authority into his own hands. This determination 
was not, however, acted upon hastily. On the 
21st of March, 1499, they authorized Francis de 
Bobadilla ^ to ascertain what persons have raised 
themselves against justice in the island of His- 
paniola, and to proceed against them according to 
law.' On the 21st of May, 1499, they conferred 
upon this officer the government, and signed an 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 2t)5 

order that all arms and f ortr-esses in the Indies 
should be given up to him. On the 26th of the 
same month, they gave him the following re- 
markable letter to Columbus : — 

" ' Don Christopher Columbus, our Admiral of 
the Ocean : We have commanded the Comandador 
Francis de Bobadilla, the bearer of this, that he 
speak to you on our part some things which he 
will tell you; w^e pray you give him faith and 
credence, and act accordingly. 

" ^I the King, I the Queen. 
" ' By their command, 

" ' Miguel Perez de Almazan.' 
" Bobadilla, however, was not sent from Spain 
until the beginning of July, 1500, and did not 
make his appearance in Hispaniola till the 23d 
of August of the same year. Their Highnesses, 
therefore, must have taken time before carrying 
their resolve into execution ; and what they meant 
by it is dubious. Certainly, not that the matter 
should have been transacted in the coarse way 



266 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

which Bobadilla adopted. It Is a great pity, and 
a sad instance of mistaken judgment, that thej 
fixed upon him for their agent." . 

Bobadilla' s first act was to seize the admiral's 
house, and summon Columbus before him for 
examination. No resistance was offered by either 
Columbus or his brothers, and Bobadilla promptly 
put them all in chains, and shipped them off to 
Spain ! 

And now charges came thick and fast against 
the caged lion ; the historian Herrera says that 
" the stones rose up against him and his brothers." 
Members of the various expeditions " told how he 
had made them work, even sick men, at his 
fortresses, at his house, at the mills, and other 
buildings ; how he had starved them ; how he had 
condemned men to be whipped for the slightest 
causes, as, for instance, for stealing a peck of 
wheat when they were dying of hunger. Con- 
sidering the difficulties he had to deal with, and 
the scarcity of provisions, many of these accusa- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. '267 

tions, if rightly examined, would probably have 
not merely failed in producing anything against 
Columbus, but would have developed some proofs 
of his firmness and sagacity as a governor. Then 
his accusers went on to other grounds, such as his 
not having baptized Indians, ' because he desired 
slaves rather than Christians.' " 

The charges were either frivolous or malicious, 
and were all capable of explanation. Few men, 
possessing the romantic and enthusiastic spirit of 
Columbus, would have acted with the good sense 
and moderation which, on the whole, characterized 
his dealings with the natives of the West Indies. 

However, the unmediate effect of Bobadilla's 
deposition of Columbus was to end his career as 
governor of the Indies. " His chains lay heavily 
upon him, nor would he allow them to be removed 
unless by royal command." 

" The career of Columbus had already been 
marked by strong contrasts. First, a ' pauper 
pilot,' then the viceroy of a new world; alter- 




Columbus sent to Spain in Chains. 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 269 

nately hoping and fearing, despondent, and trium- 
phant, he had passed through strange vicissi- 
tudes of good and evil fortune. But no two 
events in his hf e stand out in stronger contrast to 
each other than his return to Spain after his first 
voyage and his return now. He was then a con- 
queror; he was now a prisoner. He was then 
the idol of popular favor; he was now the un- 
popular victim of insidious maligners. In truth, 
the contrast was so startling as to strike home to 
the hearts of the common people, even of those — 
and there were many such — who had lost kinsmen 
or friends in that fatal quest for gold which the 
admiral had originated and stimulated. The 
broad fact was this : Columbus had given Spain a 
new world ; Spain loaded him with fetters in re- 
turn. There was a reaction. The current of 
public opinion began to turn in his favor. The 
nation became conscious of ingratitude to its bene- 
factor. The nobility were shocked at the insult 
to one of their own order. And, no sooner had 



270 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 

the sovereigns learned from Columbus of his 
arrival, and of his disgrace, than they issued im- 
mediate orders for his Hberation, and summoned 
him to their court at Granada, forwarding money 
to enable him to proceed there in a style befitting 
his rank. They then received him with all pos- 
sible signs of distinction ; repudiated Bobadilla's 
arbitrary proceedings ; and promised the admiral 
compensation and satisfaction. As a mark of 
their disapprobation of the way in which Bobadilla 
had acted under their commission, they pointedly 
refused to inquire into the charges against Colum- 
bus, and dismissed them as not worthy of investi- 
gation." 

The fire of adventure still blazed in the breast 
of the rugged old admiral. He sought a private 
audience with Queen Isabella, and into her sym- 
pathetic ear poured out the story of his wrongs. 
It was promised that the sway of the new gover- 
nor should last for two years only, when it was 
hoped that the reins of government might be 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 271 

again entrusted to Columbus. Already murmurs 
of discontent were heard at Bobadilla's actions. 
He harried the natives, made slaves of them all, 
and succeeded in wringing from them four times 
as much gold as did Columbus. Charged with 
the most minute instructions as to his conduct 
of the affairs of the colonies, a new governor, 
Nicholas de Ovando, left Spain on February 13, 
1502, with command of twenty-five hundred 
adventurers. 

Meantime Columbus chafed at his forced inac- 
tivity, and he soon laid a new scheme before the 
monarchs of Spain. He had long held the theory 
that somewhere there was a strait leadinof from 
the vicinity of St. Domingo to the East Indies 
where the Portuguese held sway, and from which 
they were already drawing vast riches. He per- 
suaded the sovereigns to furnish him with the 
necessary ships to put this theory to the test. To 
this they agreed, and in May, 1502, Columbus 
and his brother Bartholomew and his second son 
Fernando, set sail from Cadiz. 



272 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOU. 

Martinique was reached on June 13, and after 
refitting, set sail for Jamaica July 14tli. " For 
about nine weeks he made so little progress that 
his crews began to clamor for the abandonment 
of the expedition. The ships were worm-eaten 
and leaky. Provisions were running short. The 
seamen had seen their commander thrust away 
from what might be called his own door ; and the 
sight of his powerlessness had strengthened their 
independence until it amounted to insubordination. 
Fortunately, however, before the discontent broke 
out into open mutiny, a breeze sprang up from 
the east, and the admiral easily persuaded his 
unruly crews that it was better to prosecute their 
voyage than to remain beating about the islets 
waiting to return home." 

At length they came in sight of the coast of 
Honduras, along which they coasted to the east- 
ward as far as Cape Gracias a Dios, so named in 
gratitude for a timely shift of wind which enabled 
them to continue their coastwise voyage. A few 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOB. 27o 

weeks later the Bay of Panama was reached, and 
the fleet again refitted and watered, but still there 
were no signs of the kingdom of the Grand Khan ! 
But the admiral lingered on the coast of Central 
America, until December 5th, when a violent hur- 
ricane was like to have wrecked the caravels. 
After buffeting the waves for a week they gained 
the mouth of a river, which Columbus named 
Bethlehem, having entered it on the day of Epiph- 
any. 

Here they heard of a powerful cacique named 
Quibia, lord of some marvelous gold mines. 
They managed to obtain large quantities of the 
precious metal, so that Columbus was sure that 
he had at last come to the very Aurea Chersonesus 
from which Solomon had collected the gold for 
the Temple at Jerusalem ! Here a settlement was 
founded with about eighty colonists. Huts were 
built, and supplies sent ashore, Columbus immedi- 
ately setting sail for Spain for reinforcements. 
But before the ships had gained the sea-breeze 



274 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 

the Spaniards got into a bloody fight with the 
natives and many were killed. The result was 
that the colony was abandoned and the survivors 
were taken aboard the fleet once more. But now 
the ships were found to be utterly unseaworthy, 
so Columbus ran them ashore on the coast of 
Jamaica, built huts on deck for housing the crews, 
and sent messengers to Ovando in Hispaniola 
asking for a ship to carry them all to Spain. 

Months went by and no succor came ; the crews 
mutinied and were on the point of starting for 
Hispaniola in native canoes. From this mad pro- 
ject they were diverted by the threatening hos- 
tility of the Indians, which was only averted by 
Columbus foretelling an eclipse of the moon, 
which he said he had called down from heaven 
to punish them for their bad conduct. The 
eclipse arrived punctually, and once more the star 
of the white men was in the ascendant. 

When eight months had rolled by a caravel 
arrived from Ovando with some trifling presents 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOE. 275 

for Columbus, and promising speedy succor. But 
it was not until June 28, 1504, a year after the 
beaching of the worn-out vessels, that the Span- 
iards were gladdened by the sight of two caravels 
coming to their relief, under the command of 
Ovando in person. In less than a month 
Columbus was once more on the high seas, the 
prows of his ships pointing toward Spain. 

Misfortunes still pursued him ; fearful storms 
swept the Atlantic ; twice the ship was dis- 
masted and in danger of foundering ; added to 
which was the fact that the admiral's health was 
steadily succumbing to the attacks of disease. 
On the other hand he could expect no very en- 
thusiastic reception at court. On every hand he 
had failed. He had discovered no strait, he 
brought home no gold, and he had lost his ships. 
So, " prostrated by sickness, nearly ruined in 
means, and hopeless of encouragement from the 
sovereigns, the discoverer of the New World 
arrived at Seville on the 7th of November, 1504, 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 277 

in as miserable a plight as his worst enemy could 
desire." To add to his sorrow, his best friend 
was no more, for Queen Isabella died on the 26th 
of November. 

Columbus had previously written to the sov- 
ereisrns that he was too ill to wait on them at 
court, though still proffering his services. But 
the end was near. Havino^ received the conso- 
lations of the Church, and uttering as his last 
words, " Into thy hands, Lord, I commend my 
spirit," the gallant explorer died at Yalladolid on 
Ascension Day, May 20th, 1506. 

" His body was deposited in the convent of St. 
Francisco, and his obsequies were celebrated with 
funeral pomp at Valladolid, in the parochial 
church of Santa Maria de la Antigua. His re- 
mains were transported afterwards, in 1513, to 
the Carthusian monastery of Las Cuevas of 
Seville, to the chapel of St. Ann or of Santo 
Christo, in which chapel were likewise deposited 
those of his son Don Diego, who died in the 



278 COL UMB US THE ^'A VIGA TOB. 

village of Montalban, on the 23cl of February, 
1526. In the year 1536 the bodies of Columbus 
and his son Diego were removed to Hispaniola, 
and interred in the principal chapel of the 
cathedral of the city of San Domingo ; but even 
here they did not rest in quiet, having since been 
again disinterred, and conveyed to Havana, in the 
island of Cuba." 

Ferdinand ordered a monument to be erected 
to the memory of Columbus bearing these words ; 
" To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a New 
World." 

He died in total ignorance of the importance 
of his discovery. Its reality exceeded by far his 
own wildest dreams. " Until his last breath," 
says Irving, " he entertained the idea that he had 
merely opened a new way to the old resorts of 
opulent commerce, and had discovered some of 
the wild regions of the East. He supposed His- 
paniola to be the ancient Ophir which had been 
visited by the ships of Solomon, and that Cuba 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 279 

and Terra Firma were but remote parts of Asia. 
What visions of glory would have broken upon 
his mind could he have known that he had indeed 
discovered a new continent, equal to the whole of 
the Old World in magnitude, and separate by 
two vast oceans from all the earth hitherto known 
by civilized man ! And how would his magnan- 
imous spirit have been consoled, amidst the afflic- 
tions of age and the cares of penury, the neglect 
of a fickle public, and the injustice of an ungrate- 
ful king, could he have anticipated the splen- 
did empires which were to spread over the 
beautiful world he had discovered ; and the 
nations, and tongues, and languages which were 
to jfill its lands with his renown, and revere and 
bless his name to the latest posterity ! " 

" Inexpressibly melancholy," says a recent 
writer, " is the story of the reverses in the fortune 
of Columbus, and of the clouds that darken his 
declining years. The very enthusiasm with which 
he had described the riches and resources of the 




SunoVs Statue of Columbus, Central Park, New York, 



COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 281 

New World caused more to be expected of him 
than he could accomplish. He was the constant 
victim of intrigue. His colonists sent to the 
Court misstatements of his management and his 
motives, and one of the most devout, sincere, and 
unselfish of men was depicted as a sordid and 
lying adventurer. It was his destiny to drink 
the cup of ingratitude to the dregs. With Queen 
Isabella dead, his subordinates conspiring against 
him, and the cold-hearted Ferdinand neglecting 
him, one by one the pledges that had been re- 
ceived from his patroness were left unredeemed. 
Broken in health, half blind, he spent years in 
seeking audience of kings and ministers, and in 
his later life, to the pangs of physical suffering 
were added the torture of seeing others wearing 
the honors due himself. Finally he was reduced 
to begging a loan of money to buy a cot upon 
which to die. It is all a most dramatic and 
pathetic story, — the rise from a humble workshop 
to the pinnacle of renown as the discoverer of a 



282 COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOB. 

New Worldj followed by a steady sinking to 
poverty and neglect, ending with death in a lodg- 
ing-house. He died uttering as his last words 
those of Christ on the cross ; but the local Cron- 
icouj which collects all the details of city life, 
has not even a word of mention of his 
death for that year. After his death his fame 
quickly reached the zenith. Not the least mar- 
vellous of the gifts of Columbus was his extraor- 
dinary power of detailed observation, which at- 
tracted the profound admiration of Humboldt. 
Not a change in compass or current, not a wisp 
of floating weed or flight of birds, escaped his 
studious eye, and his recorded inferences and con- 
clusions would alone place him among the wisest 
of mankind." 

Enough has been said in the foregoing pages 
to show that " Columbus never saw, much less 
stood upon, the shores of the continent of North 
America. In no sense was he the discoverer of 
that great country which is now known by the 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 283 

name of the United States of America. His 
gold-hunting expeditions were confined to the 
islands, and the adjacent coasts of South and 
Central America." The very situation of the first 
land he saw is doubtful, though Watling Island 
is now generally accepted as the site of the his- 
toric landfall ; and it was from this spot that 
he wrote home to their Catholic majesties that he 
should be able to supply them with all the gold 
they needed, with spices, cotton, mastic, aloes, 
rhubarb, cinnamon, and slaves." At one time 
the great admiral bade fair to discover the Flor- 
idian peninsula, but he changed his course to the 
southwest in search of his chimerical Cipango. 

To the Enoflish — -the near kin and blood-rela- 
tions of the descendants of Leif Ericson and his 
Vikings — belongs the honor of re-discovering the 
forgotten continent of North America of which 
our own land forms a part ; and the Cabots — 
John the father, and Louis, Sebastian, and 
Sancho, the sons — in 1497, in a Bristol ship 



284 COL UMB US THE NA VIGA TOR. 

called the Matthew, were the first to set foot on 
the mainland; coasting from Labrador to the lati- 
tude of Cape Hatteras. 

The voyages of the Cabots to North America 
were followed by those of Cortereal, a Portuguese, 
in 1500 and 1501 ; by those of various seamen 
from 1506 to 1530 ; by those of Jacques Car- 
tier for exploration and discovery in 1534-35,- 
41,-43. Curiously enough, during the first fifty 
years of the 16th century, we find all the mari- 
ners taking one of two known routes — the ex- 
treme southerly course followed by the Spaniards 
and the equally extreme northerly one traversed 
by the Northmen and later by the English. 

Various abortive attempts at settlement were 
made. " The first colonists in 1585 had to be 
taken off in 1586. The first real effort at coloni- 
zation on United States territory was that of Sir 
Walter Raleigh, and out of repeated failures arose 
the formation of the Virginia, the London, and 
the Plymouth Companies, the domain of the lat- 



COLUMBUS THE NAVIGATOR. 285 

ter extending from Long Island Sound to Maine. 
The Plymouth Company dissolved in its turn, 
and made room for the historic settlement of the 
Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock in 1620." 

" Honor to whom honor is due 1 " Not by 
the southern route across the Atlantic followed 
by Columbus, nor to the Spaniards, must we look 
for the beginnings of a civilized and enlightened 
government in the northern half of our conti- 
nent. ^' A settlement in Florida and a line of 
missions and feeble colonies along the Pacific 
coast are the chief claims that can be made by 
Spain to anything like a share in the honor of 
having helped to found or form the present nation." 

The real discoverers and colonizers, whose 
descendants became the dominant race in 
America, were of Enghsh affiliation, birth, or 
descent, and their slow keels were wafted hither 
by the same tempestuous gales that drove the 
hissing spray along the bulwarks of the Viking 
ships five hundred years before. 



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